Betty Sayers and Nancy Herhahn, Nebraska Rural Living founders

When sisters Betty Sayers and Nancy Herhahn graduated from Holdredge High School, educators and parents told them they could be more successful if they left Nebraska. And so they did.

Herhahn worked as a real estate company executive, living in Chicago and then San Diego. Sayers taught at a community college in Belcourt, N.D., then wrote and facilitated grant proposals and co-authored a book in Detroit Lakes, Minn.

While living outside Nebraska, the two returned for occasional visits with relatives. Sayers said they saw a discrepancy between outsiders’ perceptions of rural Nebraska and what the sisters observed on those return visits. Sayers said media stories about rural Nebraska at the time described towns as decimated and desperately poor with no services. In contrast, she said, the sisters saw the opposite during their visits: prospering small towns, good schools, safe communities with amenities and strong health care systems.

“We just saw green and prosperity,” Sayers said.

When the two returned to Nebraska – Sayers in 2003 and Herhahn in 2004 – they decided to create a Web site, Nebraska Rural Living, to promote the version of rural Nebraska they see. With Sayers now in Holdredge and Herhahn in Lexington, they chose to focus on their region, working under the umbrella of the South Platte United Chambers of Commerce.

Sayers said a regional focus is important in rural areas. While one small town may not provide every want and need, a group of small towns in a region can provide amenities competitive with city living, she said.

Around the time the sisters returned to Nebraska, they read a quote by Jim Clifton, CEO of the Gallup Corporation, that helped prompt the site’s entrepreneurial focus, Sayers said. An article in the Omaha World Herald reported Clifton saying that Nebraska needs to “recognize and appreciate great entrepreneurs and inventors the same way it recognizes and appreciates great quarterbacks.”

“And that inspired us,” Sayers said. “Because we know that the entrepreneurs, the small businesses, are the strength of Nebraska and particularly rural Nebraska.” However, entrepreneurs sometimes operate quietly in garages or other nondescript buildings, she said.

“Sometimes the communities don’t even know about them,” she said.

The site includes a “Rural Success Stories” column where they feature an entrepreneur from their region every month. The column now has more than 50 rural entrepreneur stories. Some featured companies have mostly regional or Nebraskan markets, like the greenhouse Oasis Gardens near Loomis. Others have markets that span the United States, like orthotics company Burns Podiatric Laboratory in McCook. And yet others have world-wide markets, like sprint-car engine builders D & F Service & Speed in Holbrook and ready-to-bake frozen pie business The Village Piemaker in Eustis.

The site’s “Rural Foodies” column gives eateries in the region a boost. Sayers said city dwellers worry they’ll miss fine dining and ethnic food if they move to a rural region.

But their reviewing team has already eaten in and reported on 17 food enterprises in their region that, according to the site, provide “good food, well-prepared,” including down-home food, fine dining, ethnic food and specialties like wine and sausage.

“And honestly, every month we think, ‘All right, this is the last one. We’re not going to find another one. This is the end,’ and then somebody will make a suggestion. If it’s within 60 miles, you’ll find us there,” Sayers said.

Currently the site features 13 Nebraska communities. Participating communities pay roughly $1 per citizen to be featured. Sayers said they negotiate this rate, since it might be too much for some communities. The site encourages tiny communities to pool their resources and join as a regional area if they can’t afford to join alone, she said.

When a community joins, Nebraska Rural Living creates a community profile that includes information important to people considering moving to the area, like school quality.

“Rural Nebraska, as well as all of Nebraska, has very good scores in that line and rural Nebraska is getting stronger and better because the class size is small,” Sayers said. “And I think that is just one of the prime advantages of rural schools … In rural Nebraska you can get a private school education with public dollars.”

Site writers also research and report on the quality of healthcare in the community or surrounding area, tourism opportunities, community governance and citizen participation, amenities and features including recreation.

Sayers and Herhahn volunteer their services to the Web site. The site employs a part-time editor and hires some Nebraskan writers and photographers.

The site also includes an “Articles and Essays” column where anyone can submit writing. The site publishes selected articles or essays in this column with the writers’ bylines, but doesn’t pay those writers.

Sayers said about 26,000 people visit each month and stay an average of 4.5 minutes.

“According to Constant Contact, our software provider, this puts us in the top 20 percent of the Web sites they support for people just paying attention and reading,” Sayers said.

More than 400,000 people have “visited” the communities online over the past couple years, she said.

When Sayers and Herhahn developed the site, they consulted with the Nebraska Department of Economic Development and the Center for Rural Affairs. Under the South Platte United Chambers of Commerce umbrella, they received two grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

With enough funding, Sayers said they’d like Nebraska Rural Living to cover other regions of Nebraska and eventually the entire state.

Sayers and Herhahn have another Web site, Chicken Dance Trail, which provides online self-guided bird-watching tours. Grants from the Nebraska Department of Economic Development’s Division of Travel and Tourism and the Nebraska Environmental Trust they applied for via the South Platte United Chambers of Commerce helped pay for that site, along with in-kind contributions from GROW Nebraska. For the Chicken Dance Trail project, Sayers and Herhahn also consult with the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission.