Thrive in Five with Thrive Community Partners

Building stronger communities starts with stronger strategy.

Thrive in Five is a quick, practical podcast for the people doing the important work of building, sustaining, and growing communities.

Hosted by Sarah Stephens Krupp and Renee Smith, founders of Thrive Community Partners, each episode delivers one actionable idea in five minutes or less for community leaders, economic developers, chambers of commerce, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and organizations working to create lasting impact.

Drawing from decades of experience in community development, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, grant strategy, and organizational capacity building, Sarah and Renee share honest conversations about what works, what doesn't, and how to move from ideas to implementation.

Whether you're leading a downtown revitalization effort, writing your next strategic plan, building partnerships, supporting entrepreneurs, or looking for funding strategies that create long-term success, Thrive in Five provides practical insights you can apply immediately.

New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Topics include:

Strategic Planning
Community Development
Economic Development
Entrepreneurship
Grant Strategy
Organizational Capacity
Leadership
Partnerships
Rural & Small Community Growth

Because thriving communities don't happen by accident—they happen through intentional leadership, practical strategy, and people willing to do the work together.

All Episodes

Thrive in Five with Thrive Community Partners

Why We Started Thrive

September 12, 2026 • Sarah and Renee • Season 1 • Episode 18

0:00 | 2:54

What are your ideas to THRIVE? Share!

After all of these quick episodes talking about grants, strategic planning, entrepreneurship, community development, leadership and everything in between, Renee closes out Season 1 of Thrive in Five by going back to where it started.

Renee and Sarah kept seeing capable communities, purpose-driven organizations and promising entrepreneurs get stuck. Not because they weren't working hard enough or didn't have good ideas, but because they were missing the right support at the right moment.

Sometimes that's capacity. Sometimes it's grant writing or strategic planning. And sometimes it's simply having an experienced outside perspective in the room to help you figure out what comes next.

That's why they created Thrive.

In this season finale, Renee shares why they see themselves as partners, not simply consultants, what their own experience doing this work has taught them, and why they want to be there for the difficult planning conversations, the grant rejections, the pivots and, especially, the wins.

If something from Season 1 made you think differently, gave you an idea or helped you take a next step, this episode is also an invitation:

Let's keep the conversation going.

Thank you for spending five minutes at a time with us this season!

Five Minutes - One Practical Idea - Stronger Communities.

"It's a Brand New Day"

Learn to Thrive!

thrivecommunitypartners.com

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I'm Renee. And for our final episode on this first run, I want to get personal for a minute. And although Sarah is not with me, I want to speak for her as well. Sarah and I started Thrive because we kept seeing the same gaps. Communities with real potential, organizations with genuine purpose, entrepreneurs with ideas worth building. And they were all stuck. Not for lack of effort, not for lack of caring, but for lack of the right support at the right moment. Capacity. A grant they couldn't write, a strategic plan they couldn't implement, a business model that needed one honest outside conversation to click into place. We built Thrive to be that support. Not the consultants that show up, hand you a report, and then disappear. The partners who stay in it with you through the hard planning conversations, through the grant rejections, through the pivots, and through the wins. We've been the boots on the ground. We have gone through probably many of the same things that you find yourself going through. We did not come out of all of it unscathed. But we've learned a lot. And if we can come in and assist an organization, a community, a business, and help you navigate some of the things that we have been lucky enough in our lives to already do, that's why we started this business. It's why we're doing what we're doing. We believe in people, we believe in communities, and we believe in progress. So if something in any of these episodes has been useful, if it sparked an idea, shifted a perspective, or helped you think differently about your work, that's exactly what we've hoped for. And if you're ready to take it further, we would love to talk with you. Thank you for listening. I'm Renee, and this is Thrive in Five.