Johnston Now Honors: Nonprofit of the Year Award winner's movement boosts small town’s future

By Jamie Strickland

If you’ve ever wondered what impact one person might be able to have on a community, just look at Activate Selma.

This nonprofit organization has accomplished much collectively, but it’s all due to the small individual actions taken by each of its members.

The group has been receiving more and more attention since its inception in 2018, and its this year’s Johnston Now Honors Nonprofit of the Year Award recipient.

What began as four people getting together for coffee each week has grown into a grassroots effort that has sparked big transformations in Selma.

“You have to activate yourself first,” said founding member Cindy Brookshire. “By changing ourselves, we change our communities.”

Made up of business owners, residents, investors and volunteers, the weekly gathering now sees upwards of 30 people on a regular basis. The motivations of each person may differ slightly, but the collective mission is the same: To help their community grow and prosper.

“Everyone wants to grow individually, but you have

to grow as a town, we grow together,” board member Ron Hester said. “It’s not really a personal agenda…it doesn’t work if it's all about you. The group's focus has been on revitalizing the downtown area, or “Selma’s front porch,” as they refer to it.

Having spent time volunteering at the Selma Visitor Center, it was the lack of visitors that made Brookshire realize something needed to be done to attract people to come downtown again.

Teaming up with Melissa Dooley, who was a town employee at the time, Jeffery Hamilton of the Rudy Theatre (and later Coffee on Raiford) and Donna Reid of a local antique store, they began to gather for coffee each week and discuss what they could do about it.

Hamilton noted that the Rudy Theatre was often full of visitors coming to hear local music, but they had nowhere else to go to eat, drink or shop while they were in town. He renovated a downtown building and he and his sister opened a coffee shop. An ice cream shop opened up across the street, and one at a time, Raiford Street has started to fill up with businesses and

patrons again. Just within the past two years, a general store, antique store, toy store, book store, seafood market, Creole restaurant, an upscale cocktail bar and a local tap room have all opened downtown.

Of course, Activate Selma does not take full credit for all of that, but they did light a spark that got the revitalization flame blazing. Brookshire said that having a grassroots group such as theirs lets potential investors know that there is a supportive community in Selma. Activate Selma started with small but noticeable aesthetic changes. Taking the advice of national revitalization expert Roger Brooks and his Destination Development program (destinationdevelopment.org) got them off to the right start.

Projects like planting flowers, cleaning up trash cans, encouraging building owners to apply new paint, allowing local high school students to paint murals on buildings, facilitating public art installations, creating a downtown map for visitors and nicer signage influenced others to want to make improvements to their properties too.

They developed the motto: “We don’t complain, we take action.”

The group has led efforts to participate in programs like Hometown Makeover and Strong Towns, where this year they made the final four.

“Group projects are small steps that spark big change,” Brookshire said.

In partnership with the Town of Selma and local business owners, Activate Selma hosts a monthly concert series that draws crowds downtown called Rockin’ on Raiford, and was the catalyst for the installation of Art Out Loud Park. A new downtown farmer’s market is also on the horizon.

Communication and partnerships with town officials are very important as well, and the group is happy to have the support of the staff and administration.

“Work on small projects that can have a big impact,” Hamilton advised. “Don’t worry about what you can’t do or don’t have control over — focus on what you are able to do.”

Activate Selma intentionally meets at different locations each week to encourage people to visit new places and have dialogue with people they might not otherwise meet.

The group meets every Wednesday at 9 a.m., no matter what. Board member Chandler Pernell said the consistency of meeting every week is essential to keep the conversations going.

“Some meetings might seem like you didn’t benefit, or advance yourself, or that nothing really happened, physically. You didn’t see movement, but the next week comes, and a little idea that sparked, now it’s a little bigger. And so it’s the consistency of that.”

Meetings begin by allowing each person a moment to introduce themselves and what they do, followed by a time to discuss group projects and how the attendees might help each other accomplish their goals. People pull together their collective knowledge, guide entrepreneurs towards local resources, build community relationships and cross promote each other’s businesses. Everyone is welcome.

Other local communities have started to look to Selma for counsel on how they can spark similar change in their communities. Dooley offered this piece of advice, “Remember why you are there and do what you can. Write down your mission and when you start to forget, go back and look at it.” 

Activate Selma received official non-profit status last year, and its primary method of fundraising is through grassroot efforts such as 50/50 or gift basket raffles. 

Brookshire, who is also a local author, wrote the book “A Heart for Selma: 12 Stories of Activate Selma NC” which was published in July of 2021. You can purchase the book, read more about the organization, shop for merchandise or make a donation on their website at activatesemanc.com.

With hundreds of email newsletter subscribers and nearly 3,000 followers on Facebook, lots of eyes are on Selma to see what they’ll do next. 

Thank you to The Arbors at East Village for sponsoring this award.