Main Spotlight: Eight Graphics that Explain Main Street Leadership in 2025

For the past 20 years, Main Street America has sent out surveys to local Main Street leaders to better understand trends in the challenges, opportunities, goals, and needs of the network. In late January, we launched our 17^th survey of this type. Here are eight graphics that explain the key findings of the survey and what they mean for Main Street leaders.

#1 Survey Respondents Represented the Full Breadth of the Movement

This year, we heard from 422 local Main Street leaders, making this year’s survey our largest since 2011. We see a strong alignment between the survey sample and the 2025 network in terms of designation status and community populations. The survey was also representative of community size. Communities with 5,000 residents or fewer represented 23% of all respondents, and those communities represent 24% of the MSA network. Communities of 10,000 to 50,000 residents are slightly overrepresented in the survey, and communities with more than 100,000 residents are slightly underrepresented.

Key Takeaway: We heard from leaders and programs that resemble the Main Street network at large, which makes us confident that the survey results broadly describe the current state of Main Street leadership.

#2 Local Main Street programs operate with limited budgets and staff, but most leaders saw resources increase over the previous 12 months

53% of this year’s respondents reported an annual budget of over $150,000, compared to 50% in 2024 and 48% in 2023. Meanwhile, nearly 60% of respondents reported that their budget had increased in the past year. 60% of respondents also reported operating with one full-time staff person, a slight increase over 2024 and 2023 (58% both years). We also saw slight increases in the number of leaders who reported having at least one part-time staff member and at least 20 volunteers in 2025.

Key Takeaway: Modest increases in budgets, staffing, and volunteers are encouraging, but more significant bumps are needed to substantially increase our impact. 

#3 Main Street leaders work long hours for limited salaries and often supplement their income with second jobs and side hustles

We have long understood that the work of local Main Street leaders requires long hours for somewhat modest salaries, but this year, we learned more about what’s required of these individuals and the ways they go above and beyond in their work. This year’s survey data indicates that half of local leaders work 43 hours per week or more, and 14% worked more than 50 hours per week. Astonishingly, close to 40% of responding directors said they lead multiple organizations, and close to 40% have a second job or side hustle. Among those respondents working second jobs, about half make less than $50,000 per year for their Main Street work. 

Key Takeaway: Local Main Street leaders are willing to put in hard work, but juggling their roles alongside a second job may be unsustainable and untenable for many long term. 

#4 How a Main Street leader feels about their compensation depends on their salary and benefits

We asked whether local Main Street directors’ programs offered benefits, what annual salary the leaders earned, and whether they felt they were fairly compensated for their work. The results of these questions emphasize the importance of fair and sustainable compensation and benefits for Main Street work. Respondents who felt fairly compensated were more likely to earn more than $70,000 and receive benefits. On the other hand, respondents who did not feel fairly compensated were more likely to earn less and not receive benefits. We also noticed that only 28% of respondents who felt fairly compensated also worked a second job or side hustle, compared to 48% who did not feel fairly compensated.

Key Takeaway: To make sure Main Street leadership is a viable career in the long term, we need to continue pushing for competitive salaries and benefits for executive directors across the network. 

#5 Main Street leaders balance a love of their work with a variety of challenges 

In response to an open-ended prompt focused on the best parts and biggest challenges of being a local Main Street leader, three-quarters of directors wrote about having a real community impact, supporting small local businesses, or building relationships with other community members. But the struggles of the job are all too real, too. About 60% of respondents wrote about funding, financial stability, time management, and untenable workload. 

Key Takeaway: Main Street leaders feel motivated and rewarded in their roles when they can see their communities flourishing as a result of their efforts. At the same time, those efforts can easily become a relentless workload without proper support and boundaries.

#6 The challenges and frustrations facing Main Street organizations and communities have been consistent over the past few years, with some notable exceptions

In the past three surveys of Main Street leaders, limited budgets have represented the top organizational challenge: about 60% of leaders indicated limited budgets were an organizational challenge in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Looking closer at this year’s data, we see that having more dollars in a program’s budget doesn’t detract from the budgetary challenges. 63% of programs with budgets over $100,000 said limited budgets were a challenge, and more than 30% of programs with budgets over $500,000 indicated limited budgets were a challenge. With bigger budgets, programs hire more staff and take on more work. There is always the opportunity for Main Streets to do more. 

Challenges in the community were also consistent with past surveys, including inconsistent or limited business hours, absent or neglectful property owners, and lack of business variety. Issues with parking were notably higher this year — 26% in 2025 compared to 17 – 18% in 2024 and 2023 surveys — as were challenges with limited municipal funds and community wealth and with unaffordable commercial spaces, which each climbed by five to six percentage points between 2024 and 2025. 

Key Takeaway: The consistency of the top challenges highlighted by local Main Street leaders is striking. If the network focuses together on testing promising responses to these challenges, we hope we might see their prevalence decrease in future leader surveys.

#7 Successful events continued to stand out as top organizational wins, and grant opportunities emerged as the most preferred form of support needed

Every year, local Main Street leaders tout successful events and support for existing businesses as their top two wins, and placemaking has been the third or fourth highest priority each year. But in 2025, leaders touted advocacy with government officials more often than in years past (16% in 2025; 8% in 2024), as well as success with accessing new sources of revenue (15% in 2025; 10% in 2024 and 2023). Meanwhile, in 2025, only 2% of respondents cited support for housing development as a major win, which is half as many as in the two years prior. 

Local leaders indicated that grant opportunities were the most important type of support their organizations needed. Access to local data such as market or demographic data and educational resources like webinars, templates, reports, tools, and guides, also stood out as particularly important. 

Key Takeaway: Local Main Street leaders are seeking support that increases their funding and knowledge. Those forms of support have the potential to build on wins related to advocacy and the diversification of revenue streams. 

#8 Local Main Street leaders pointed to a variety of goals when asked what exciting priorities they have for the year ahead

We asked local Main Street leaders to share their most exciting goals for 2025. About a third of all responses related to physical improvements and beautification projects, and another quarter cited the support they planned to offer businesses. We heard about new farmers markets, gathering spaces, renovations to historic buildings, pocket parks, walking trails, bicycle stations, and other projects. Finally, some directors pointed to goals related to organizational growth and strategic planning. The goal of one local leader was ​“to figure out who we want to be when we grow up as an organization [as we update] our strategic plan.” 

Key Takeaway: In the upcoming year, Main Street organizations look forward to developing new gathering spaces in their districts and solidifying new ways to sustain and grow their internal operations.

Looking Forward

Thanks to all those local Main Street leaders who responded to the 2025 Directors Survey! We are continually amazed by the challenges Main Street directors overcome and the work our network can do, even with such limited budgets and staff. Our single most startling finding this year might be that nearly 40% of all local directors have second jobs or side hustles.

It is clear that Main Street America and the entire network have a tremendous impact, but our potential is still greater. This year, we are excited to work on a special internship project focused on local leadership that will help us identify new ways to support Main Streeters. If the work of local Main Street leaders could be made easier and more sustainable, one can only imagine how much stronger our Main Streets could become. 

Downtown Decorations, a Main Street America Allied Member, is this quarter’s Main Spotlight advertiser. For more information about what they do to support Main Street organizations, click here.