What Matters Most?
Story by Anita Rafael
Photography courtesy Community Heart & Soul
C
ommunity Heart & Soul, a
philanthropic nonprofi t founded by
Lyman Orton, wants you to go out
and ask a simple question around the town
where you live—what matters most to the
residents?
A few years ago, the folks in Essex,
Vermont (a town that includes the village
of Essex Junction) asked everyone that
question, and, walking hand in hand with
the Heart & Soul program, they created a
new way for everyone to do business
together as neighbors, residents, and
elected offi cials. On paper, Heart & Soul
reads like a civic-action “roadmap”—it
is practical, common sense guidance for
towns and small cities all across the nation.
On the street, it’s something else entirely.
It creates breakthrough civic action for
peaceful, positive change. Essex is lasting
proof that Heart & Soul is a sustainable
collective mindset for small communities.
One of the Heart & Soul leaders in Essex,
Liz Subin, states it succinctly, “Learning
how to work together as a Heart & Soul
community changed the conversation aft er
50 years of fi ghting over what divides us.
Now we are focusing on the things we all
value.”
66 VERMONT MAGAZINE
If the name Orton rings a loud bell,
it should. Vrest and Mildred Orton
were the founders and fi rst proprietors
of the much-loved Vermont Country
Store, established in 1946. Today, run
by Lyman Orton, their son, along with
Lyman’s sons, Cabot, Gardner, and Eliot,
it is a successful, far-reaching enterprise
with two retail locations in Vermont (the
original in Weston and another in
Rockingham). It is one of the most
outstanding mail-order and online
sellers in the country.
Community Heart & Soul has been
Lyman Orton’s largest and most
signifi cant philanthropic endeavor
during the past decade, backed by a
portion of the company’s profi ts. Orton’s
ongoing support for additional research
and continued data analysis (in which
millions of dollars have been invested) of
each Heart & Soul initiative has yielded
a valuable prescription that has proven
to foster civil discourse. In case you
have forgotten, it is civil discourse that
is proven to foster and sustain progress
in the ways in which people live in and
enjoy their communities. So far, there are
72 Heart & Soul towns and cities in 16
states, from Maine to Washington, where
Residents of Essex collaborate on ideas for their town’s plan
residents are boldly, bravely moving
forward on various civic tasks with a
single goal in mind: to make their
communities wonderful places to live,
work, and play.
“Community Heart & Soul starts with one
thing,” says Orton. “Asking what matters
most to residents. Th at’s the catalyst. Th e
reason it works is because everyone gets a
chance to say what matters most to them.
It’s not your typical consultant’s gig where
the fi nal report full of cold numbers just
sits on the shelf. Instead, Community
Heart & Soul has an emotional component
built into it. It guides the residents to trust
each other and to trust their feelings about
their town to plan and decide their civic
aff airs for themselves.” He explains, “To
fi gure out what matters most to people in a
certain place starts with a two-year,
four-phase process that, along the way,
begins a fresh approach to doing
business that will carry towns and small
cities forward on productive and vibrant
paths indefi nitely.”
Th e townspeople who follow the Commu-
nity Heart & Soul roadmap do something
astonishing over and over again—they
talk! Th en, they gather, crisscross age- and