Some Saskatchewan towns consistently out-pace much bigger cities on activity participation — and the reason has almost nothing to do with budget.
When a small town outperforms a much larger city on community participation in an activity challenge, it’s worth asking why. The answer is rarely resources. It’s usually a combination of visible local leadership, an achievable and specific ask, and a willingness to celebrate participation publicly. These same traits show up again and again across the communities that have stood out through Saskatchewan’s various activity initiatives over the years.
What makes this encouraging is that none of it depends on population size or a dedicated recreation budget. A town of a few hundred people has pulled off the same kind of sustained participation as towns many times its size, simply by getting the basics right and repeating them consistently. This piece looks at what those basics actually are, using real examples from communities that have made it work — and what any school, neighbourhood, or town can borrow from them.
Why Culture Beats Budget
It’s tempting to assume that the communities with the highest participation rates must also have the biggest recreation budgets, the newest facilities, or a paid coordinator running things full time. In practice, that’s rarely the case. Many of the towns that show up year after year at the top of Saskatchewan’s activity initiatives are small, rural, and running on entirely volunteer effort. What they have instead of money is culture — a shared, almost unspoken expectation that showing up and taking part is simply what people in this town do.
Culture is a slower thing to build than a program, but it’s also far more durable. A funded initiative can disappear the moment the grant runs out. A cultural habit — the expectation that the whole street turns out for the Sunday skate, or that every family at the school takes part in the spring walk challenge — tends to survive changes in funding, changes in staff, and even changes in which specific event is running that year. It becomes part of how the community sees itself, not just something it does when asked.
This matters because it changes where organizers should spend their limited time and energy. Rather than chasing bigger budgets or flashier events, the more effective long-term investment is in the everyday visibility of participation: making sure people can see that their neighbours are taking part, and making sure that taking part feels like an easy, normal thing to do rather than a special commitment that requires planning around.
Three Communities Worth Learning From
Looking at specific examples makes this less abstract. A few Saskatchewan communities have stood out over the years for very different reasons, but each shows a version of the same underlying pattern: modest resources, applied consistently, with visible results the whole community can point to.
Elbow
Elbow directed its Community Pledge Challenge prize toward safe, modern playground equipment — turning a season of individual pledges into a lasting shared resource for local families. What made this effective wasn’t just winning the prize; it was choosing to spend it on something every family in town would use for years, which gave the whole campaign a visible, permanent payoff instead of a one-time celebration.
Unity
Unity is home to an individual pledge winner recognized for following through on a personal activity commitment, showing how individual effort and community participation reinforce each other. A single resident’s consistency became a small local story that other households pointed to — proof that a personal pledge, small as it seemed on its own, was worth taking seriously.
Yorkton
Yorkton was recognized as a winner in a national community funding contest, demonstrating how local activity and community-improvement efforts can draw support well beyond the province. That kind of outside recognition tends to reinforce local pride, which in turn makes the next round of participation easier to organize, since residents already feel their town is known for showing up.
None of these communities needed to be the largest or best-funded — they needed enough local momentum to get a critical mass of residents to say yes to something simple.
What These Communities Do Differently
Pulling apart the examples above, four habits keep showing up. None of them require a grant application or a formal committee — they’re closer to organizing choices that any group of motivated residents can put in place within a single season.
They make participation visible
Publicly tracking pledge counts or participation numbers gives residents a sense of collective progress, which tends to draw in more participants than a private, individual ask would. A simple whiteboard tally at the community hall, a running number on a Facebook page, or a printed chart at the school entrance does most of the work here.
They connect the effort to something concrete
Directing a prize toward playground equipment, rather than a generic fund, gives residents a clear, lasting reason their participation mattered. People are more willing to take part again next year when they can point to something real that resulted from the last round.
They rely on a small group of consistent organizers
A handful of committed local leaders — not a large formal committee — usually drives the bulk of participation and communication. Two or three people who show up every year are worth more than a large committee that changes every season.
They keep the ask simple
Asking residents to pledge one specific action is far more effective than asking for a broad lifestyle change or a large time commitment. “Walk to the rink on Saturdays” beats “be more active” every time.
Why Small Communities Punch Above Their Weight
Smaller towns frequently see higher participation rates relative to their population than larger cities, and the reasons are fairly intuitive. Word of mouth travels faster in a smaller community, local leaders are often personally known to residents, and a shared community identity makes collective goals feel more achievable. A pledge campaign in a town of a few thousand can feel like a shared local project in a way that’s harder to replicate at city scale — which is exactly why some of the most notable results have come from Saskatchewan’s smaller communities.
There’s also a practical side to this. In a smaller town, the person organizing the pledge campaign might also coach the local hockey team, sit on the school council, or run the general store — meaning they already have several natural channels to reach most of the town without any formal advertising. Larger cities have to build that kind of reach deliberately, which takes time and often money that smaller communities simply don’t need to spend.
“You don’t need everyone in town to be an athlete. You just need enough people who are willing to say yes to one simple thing, and willing to tell their neighbour about it.”
A note echoed by community organizers across rural SaskatchewanNone of this means larger cities can’t build the same kind of culture — it just usually takes more deliberate structure to replicate what happens naturally in a smaller town. Neighbourhood-level campaigns, rather than city-wide ones, tend to be where larger urban centres have had the most success borrowing this same approach.
Common Mistakes That Stall Community Culture
Not every attempt to build this kind of culture succeeds on the first try. A few recurring mistakes tend to explain why a promising start fizzles out before it becomes a lasting habit.
- 1Relying on one big annual event instead of a routine. A single flagship event generates excitement once a year but does little to build an everyday culture of participation. Smaller, more frequent touchpoints matter more.
- 2Keeping participation numbers private. Without a visible tally or public recognition, residents have no sense of collective momentum, and the campaign loses the social pull that makes people want to join in.
- 3Making the ask too broad. A vague call to “get more active” gives residents nothing concrete to commit to, and vague asks are the ones people forget by the following week.
- 4Not leaving anything lasting behind. Campaigns that end with nothing tangible for the community to point to — no new equipment, no new tradition — tend to lose steam the following season.
What This Means for Your Own Community
You don’t need city-wide infrastructure to replicate this. A school, a neighbourhood, or even a single street can apply the same basic pattern: pick one simple, specific ask, make participation visible, and connect the effort to something the community will actually see and use afterward. The scale can start small — the pattern is what matters far more than the size of the group applying it.
Every campaign eventually ends, but the habits and infrastructure it leaves behind don’t have to. A new playground stays in use for years after the pledge count is forgotten. A resident who committed to a weekly family walk often keeps doing it long after the challenge officially closes. The real measure of a successful community culture initiative isn’t the final tally announced on closing day — it’s how much of that momentum is still visible a year later, in playgrounds being used, in families still keeping their pledge, and in the next town deciding to try something similar.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions from organizers looking to build this kind of culture in their own community.
How long does it take a community to build this kind of culture?
Most communities that pull this off see the first signs of momentum within a single season, but the habit tends to feel firmly established after two or three consecutive years of repeating the same simple ask. Consistency across multiple seasons matters more than trying to do everything at once in year one.
Do we need a formal committee to get started?
No — most of the communities that have done this well relied on two or three consistent volunteers rather than a large formal committee. A small, reliable group is usually easier to coordinate and less prone to losing momentum than a bigger structure with more moving parts.
What if our town has tried something like this before and it fizzled out?
A stalled first attempt is common and doesn’t mean the approach won’t work. It’s often worth looking at whether participation was made visible, whether the ask was specific enough, and whether the effort was tied to something lasting — those three factors explain most cases where an earlier attempt didn’t stick.
How small can a “community” be for this to work?
The pattern scales down well — a single school, a street, or even one workplace can apply the same approach at a smaller size. What matters is having a group with a shared identity, not a minimum population.
Does this approach work in bigger cities too?
Yes, though it usually needs to be applied at a neighbourhood or school level rather than city-wide, since the natural word-of-mouth advantage smaller towns have doesn’t scale automatically to a large population. Breaking a big city initiative into smaller neighbourhood pockets tends to work best.
