Annie's Action AI donates up to $5,000 of marketing and business work to each business selected for Small Town Grants — a program of We Help People Everywhere, Inc. The Foundation picks the businesses. We do the work.
Two to three businesses in the first year. Established businesses only. No cost to the business, and no obligation to buy anything from us — ever, and it's in writing.
It would be easy to dress this up. We'd rather just say what it is.
Annie's exists because small businesses can't buy what large ones buy. That's the whole company. But there's a layer below the businesses we can sell to — the ones in towns of two and three thousand people, running on one person's stubbornness, holding a service the whole town depends on and unable to spend a dollar on being found.
Those businesses are not going to become customers. They can't. And if the last one in town closes, the town drives forty minutes for something it used to have on Main Street — and then fewer people have a reason to stay.
So we give the work away. Up to $5,000 of it, at our published rates, to businesses chosen by a charity we don't control, checked by people who live in the town, with no purchase attached at any point. Then, once those businesses are standing, we point the same advertising at the town itself.
What we get out of it, honestly: the towns we work in get stronger, and we are on record about what we did. That's the entire return. We're not pretending it's charity with no upside — we're saying the upside is a town that's still there.
Mark Hope is involved in both organisations. We don't hide that — we built the program so it doesn't matter.
Nothing unlocks by waiting. Each stage opens when the work behind it is done and the town's board has confirmed it.
Agreement signed, coursework completed at Annie's Training Center, first coaching session held.
Baseline recorded, written plan agreed with the coach, first in-person board visit completed.
Plan milestones met, second board visit, interview completed, metrics reported.
Final milestones met, final report, participation in the town's own campaign.
Every service debits the account at the same price a paying customer pays. Nothing is marked up for the program and nothing is invented for it.
Each business has an account showing its cap, what it has earned, what it has used and what is left. The board reads the same page the owner does.
A coach recommends what to fix first — a logo, a website, an email campaign. The owner decides, in writing, and can decline anything.
We sell the work. We never sell the result. We don't promise rankings, traffic, leads, revenue, or that any business will survive. Nobody honest can. What we promise is the work, done properly, and an honest account of what happened — including when it didn't work.
Each of these has an obvious lookalike. Saying so out loud is how we keep from drifting into one.
The businesses aren't the point. The town is the point.
Once a town's core businesses are standing and its services are real again, we turn the same advertising capability on the community itself — and market the town to people in larger towns. Somewhere to move. Somewhere to open something. Somewhere to buy a house.
More people broadens the tax base, and a broader tax base is what lets a town pay for itself instead of waiting for somebody to rescue it.
This stage is not funded yet, and we would rather say so than let it read as a promise. It's the direction the program is built toward, and how it gets paid for is a decision the Foundation's board hasn't made.
Small Town Grants is a program of We Help People Everywhere, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity, which makes the grants, holds the agreements, and oversees the work. Services are donated in kind by Annie's Action AI, a for-profit company that delivers the marketing, coaching and training. The two organisations are related and say so openly.
We do not promise rankings, traffic, leads, revenue, or that any business will succeed. We provide work, training and support, and we report honestly on what happens.
No business in this program is required to purchase anything from Annie's Action AI, during the grant or after it.