Charture believes that the more a community knows about itself, the better its chances of making thoughtful decisions about its future (i.e. the better its chances of sustaining its essential qualities for future generations).
Each of Charture’s three key activities – research, action, and funding – are all designed to help a community understand itself better, and take and fund actions based on that knowledge. As a way to further link a community’s different aspects together, Charture has developed “Tie It All Together” websites (TIATs).
TIATs share a common structure: a directory of individuals, organizations, and businesses operating in a given Area of Interest; a blog for them to connect with one another; and a calendar of events.
Where the power of the TIATs comes in is that while each looks different and serves a different Area of Interest or community, each shares the same underlying structure. As a result, each can be easily linked to the others, allowing a community to develop an increasingly comprehensive directory of its organizations and individuals, as well as an increasingly rich calendar of events.
Because they are free to both those posting information and those looking for information, TIATs quickly prove popular: the four TIATs Charture has helped launch have over 500 organizations and individuals registered with them, and receive hundreds of hits per day.
Furthering the reach of Charture’s TIATs is the strategic link Charture has forged with Vertical Media (a member of 1% for the Tetons). Vertical Media runs tourist-oriented websites in major resorts throughout the country, including one of Jackson Hole’s most-visited sites. By linking with Charture, Vertical Media can pull event information directly from Charture’s TIATs, giving Vertical and its users a unique and comprehensive source of information about activities in Jackson Hole. Similarly, because of the reach of Vertical’s sites, those organizations and businesses listed with Charture’s TIATs have a new and free tool for reaching prospective customers who would otherwise be hard-pressed to find them.
As a result, Charture has created what it calls the win-win-win-win-win, or win5.
- Jackson Hole gets what it needs as a community – a way to pursue comprehensive sustainability by connecting organizations and sharing information
- Jackson Hole gets what it needs for its tourism economy – a chance to remain distinctive, if not truly unique
- Local organizations get what they need – a way to connect with others in their “Area of Interest, plus a cost-free way to gain exposure to the >100,000
- visitors/month to AllJacksonHole.com
- Vertical Media gets what it needs – a chance to make its basically-a- commodity website distinctive, and therefore gain a competitive advantage
- Tourists get what they need – a chance to learn about, and therefore be able to customize, their visit to a distinctive place
