RENO COUNTY, Kan. – Pride and progress in a community don’t always start with a large, headline-grabbing project. They can also start with what residents see every day — active storefronts, well-kept properties, safe streets and signs of forward movement.
According to the 1,144 residents who responded to the 2025 Love Where You Live Resident Perception Survey, those visible signs of progress matter deeply.
The recent survey results mark the second year of Hutchinson Community Foundation’s three-year Love Where You Live Community Empowerment Initiative, designed by Ohio-based Innovation Economy Partners, to provide communities in Reno County with data and a process for making progress. The initiative centers resident perceptions, dialogue and collaborative action to strengthen community pride and accelerate visible progress.
As with the 2024 survey, residents from seven communities across Reno County — Buhler, Haven/Yoder, Fairfield area, Hutchinson, Nickerson, Pretty Prairie, and South Hutchinson — were asked how they felt about their towns, what they viewed as priorities, and what indicators might signal progress. This year’s survey engagement built on the 1,022 people who took the survey in 2024.
Across both years, residents’ priorities have remained consistent: attracting new businesses, removing blight, improving infrastructure, improving housing and supporting local business growth. Child care access, workforce training, mental health services and revitalized downtown spaces also consistently ranked near the top.
When residents were asked to articulate priority projects in their own words, the most common themes were centered on economic development, housing, infrastructure, community revitalization, and programs and amenities for families and youth.
“Basically, what the people over the last two years are saying, and how we’re framing it, is ‘Grow the economy, fix up the place and make it easier to live here,’” said Jan Steen, Hutchinson Community Foundation senior program officer.
The foundation is encouraging communities to consider incremental improvements to highly visible challenges that can be faster to execute and more financially manageable while also helping improve community perceptions.
“If communities can find that one small, visible project and quickly address it — maybe it’s fixing a sidewalk, sprucing up an abandoned property, adding some lighting — and then find another, and another, those incremental changes add up. Residents will see those improvements as signs of progress, then confidence and pride improve, which can lead to more improvements that spur investments that allow bigger challenges to be addressed. It’s a loop that can eventually lead to growth,” Steen said.
As part of the second phase of the survey cycle, Steen has met with communities to better understand their needs and explore how the community foundation can support their goals.
“As volunteers and community leaders better understand priorities their neighbors want addressed, we don’t want them to wonder what to do with their reports,” he said. “I’m here to sit down and discuss those local needs, then connect people with the resources they’ll find beneficial to moving forward and building their capacity – grant identification and grant writing support, leadership training, coaching, facilitation, past-project evaluation, asset mapping, and the expertise of our network of partners.”
The foundation also supports progress on priorities through its Fund for Reno County grant cycles. Awards for Impact Cycle I grants, focusing on community catalyst and community and economic development projects, will be announced soon, with the fund’s second grant cycle of the year supporting dynamic culture and thriving kids projects opening for proposals this summer.
To review full reports for each community and an interactive data tracker, visit renosurvey.com. For more information, contact Steen at [email protected] or 620-663-5293.
Hutchinson Community Foundation’s mission is to inspire philanthropy, leadership and collaboration to strengthen Reno County. Since 1990, the foundation has granted more than $115 million.
