‘We got plenty of time’

Jeff Davidson has approximately 18 months before he has to say goodbye to Jasper County and its nine communities that volunteered to participate in the Keep Iowa Beautiful-affiliated Hometown Pride Program.

Commissioned as a community coach about three-and-a-half years ago, Davidson was — and still is — tasked to coordinate with small towns for a total of five years to carry out county-wide project planning efforts, effectively growing community beautification, economic development and community development within Newton, Baxter, Prairie City, Monroe, Colfax, Lynnville, Sully, Kellogg and Mingo.

“What we’re all about is trying to make smaller towns as strong as they can be,” Davidson said.

Now entering his fourth year as a mentor to participating towns and their community leaders, Davidson has yet to think about what he intends to do after his term concludes with Jasper County’s Hometown Pride Program. However, an exit strategy will be implemented as he nears closer to his contract expiration.

“(I’ll) make sure that we’re kind of easing out my relationship and making sure we got the strong leaders involved to keep the program going,” Davidson said. “If none of the programs continue after I leave, then I failed. And I don’t want to fail. And I don’t think I’m going to fail. I think we’re going to have strong Hometown Pride committees.”

Maintaining pride

Sustaining the program’s impact and longevity within the nine participating Jasper County communities is a high priority for Davidson, whose intention has always been to guide and enable small towns to regularly and proactively seek out grants and find ways to collect funds for localized projects.

Through Davidson’s advice and training, local Hometown Pride committees should be able to preserve the program’s purpose and key values through emerging community leaders. One leader to develop from the program is Baxter Mayor Gennypher Popenhagen, who also serves as the town’s Hometown Pride committee chairperson. Davidson said Popenhagen got her start in Hometown Pride. She had no major leading experience in Baxter prior to the program’s utilization in the town of about 1,100 people.

“She had never really been a part of any kind of formal organization and is such a natural leader,” he said. “I am so proud of her and so proud of what she was able to accomplish replacing a longterm mayor (Stephen Smith, who maintained the position for 12 years) and she is doing a fabulous job in Baxter. I really think her participation in Hometown Pride helped her grow and become that leader that’s now really benefitting Baxter.”

Popenhagen’s involvement with Hometown Pride predates her mayoral duties in Baxter. Describing herself as the type of person who tackles situations by “jumping in feet first,” Popenhagen volunteered herself as the Baxter Hometown Pride chairperson Day One.

“If no one else is going to step up, I absolutely will,” Popenhagen said. “Everyone wanted to be involved in it, but no one really wanted to take charge of that leadership role. None of us knew what we were doing because it was a new committee, but (I said) I will do it … It’s an amazing program. Jeff (Davidson) is so wonderful to work with. If he doesn’t know the answer he always makes sure he finds the answer for us.”

Without Davidson as a coach, she added, committee members would not have known which grants were available to fund Baxter projects like the wayfinding signs, Main Street banners and the developments at Geise Park, which Copenhagen said has yet to be fully worked out and realized.

Getting started

The first year of Hometown Pride, Davidson said, was a “very gratifying process” in that it took very little time for him and the participating communities to get get to know each other. Although he was originally hired as a community coach for seven towns of Jasper County, Kellogg and Mingo joined later in 2017 and requested his guidance.

But no matter the town, Davidson was determined to not tell committee members what projects or ideas were important.

“We want that to come from within the community,” he said. “Each community is different … The nine towns I work with all have their own personalities and that’s kind of amazing but also kind of interesting.”

However, there is one common factor among all nine communities and their related projects: everything costs money.

“One of the things that I specifically have had as a task in each of my towns is getting people to be good grant administrators,” Davidson said. “What grants are we going to go after? Which ones are a waste of time? And which ones do we have a good chance of getting some money out of?”

Committee members were taught how to write clear and concise applications and follow up with grant administrators. If grant efforts are unsuccessful, Davidson said Hometown Pride volunteers have learned to follow up and politely find out the reasons why their community was not selected so that they can submit a stronger application next year.

“By year four this past spring, we had two really big grant cycles here in Jasper County,” he said. “One is Prairie Meadows and one is Jasper Community Foundation. We went after, I think, 17 grants altogether and got 15 ... It maybe totaled $85,000 and enabled us to really start a lot of really cool projects.”

Luckily for Davidson and his nine Hometown Pride committees, there is still 18 months left for long-awaited projects to come to fruition before the coach passes the torch to his communities and its leaders to carry on the legacy and ideals of the program.

“I’m really looking forward to finalizing some things and getting some projects that are right now sort of in the planning stages off the ground,” Davidson said. “We got plenty of time to do a lot of cool stuff yet.”