Source: BUILDING COMMUNITIES, INC. submitted to
COMMERCIALIZING RURAL COMMUNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIC PLANNING
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
COMPLETE
Funding Source
SMALL BUSINESS GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1019604
Grant No.
2019-33610-29783
Cumulative Award Amt.
$100,000.00
Proposal No.
2019-00580
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Jul 1, 2019
Project End Date
Feb 29, 2020
Grant Year
2019
Program Code
[8.6]- Rural & Community Development
Project Director
Cole, B.
Recipient Organization
BUILDING COMMUNITIES, INC.
2101 MAIN STREET SUITE 202
BAKER CITY,OR 978142677
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The economic condition of rural and tribal communities is lagging that of their urban counterparts in part because rural communities do not have the paid and volunteer capacity to successfully implement economic development strategic plans. This is resulting in population out-migration and the general decline of rural America.This project will enable Building Communities to develop a new on-line tool that allows rural economic development practitioners and volunteers greater success in identifying and implementing economic development strategies, initiatives and projects that will increase jobs and improve local quality of life. In addition, this project will contribute to a more positive outlook for rural community leaders and residents.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
100%
Developmental
0%
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
60861103010100%
Knowledge Area
608 - Community Resource Planning and Development;

Subject Of Investigation
6110 - Economy of the United States and sectors thereof;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
The overarching purpose of this project is to provide a new tool to rural economic development professionals and the volunteers that support them in order to successfully advance, track and report progress implementing economic development strategic plans. Although the primary focus area is for rural and tribal communities, it is anticipated that the tool will be useful to communities throughout the nation.Ultimately, communities will be better able to create jobs and improve their local quality of life by selecting and implementing strategies, accessing financial resources, and explaining progress to stakeholders.Objective #1--Improving Plan Implementation. For each of the 25 economic development strategies identified by Building Communities, a set of Example Action Steps (EASs) and Suggested Possible Tasks (SPTs) have been developed. For years, Building Communities has tried varying forms of technology (everything from paper to fillable PDFs to rudimentary on-line applications) to assist planning participants to identify, edit, accept and implement such action steps. Building Communities considers the inability of planning participants to conduct this activity the weakest link ("bottleneck") in the planning process for the communities. The past attempts of Building Communities to facilitate these activities have been largely unsuccessful. This project will help Building Communities engage much more effectively with planning participants to help them meet their goals. Phase II relates to the identification of new EASs and SPTs related to the refined and updated strategies (see Objective #4 below).Objective #2--Sharing Plan Progress. The creation of a community dashboard which will objectively showcase the implementation of strategies by addressing EASs and SPTs will have many advantages including inspiring and monitoring implementation performance, sharing progress with local policy makers and plan funders, and setting the stage for plan updating and implementation. Phase II will take the Phase I feasibility study findings and feedback and implement/integrate a web-based platform to share such progress.Objective #3--Connecting Communities to Funding Sources. Various "funding aggregators" (federal agencies and national development organizations) routinely inventory and promote the availability of federal funding within their various networks. Never, however, have such funding sources been linked to specific economic development strategies. Phase I will perform this linkage, thus creating additional, specific "funding action steps." This database of information could be broadened in Phase II to include state and foundation funding resources.Objective #4--Refining/Updating Strategies. The "population comfort zone" for Building Communities ranges from towns of 3,000 to small cities of 75,000 population. Rural communities on the "upper end" of this population scale have some opportunities to capitalize on economic strategies typically employed in urban communities. As such, further refining the economic strategies to create "strategy subsets" will better serve rural communities and broaden the market for Building Communities. These strategy subsets typically relate to the use of emerging technologies to create new opportunities for rural America. Building Communities will utilize its membership and participation in a national economic development organization to facilitate feedback on emerging trends. In addition, because the process innovations developed in Phases I and II of this proposal, economic development tools would be available to even smaller communities through lower costs and streamlined participation allowing Phase II to delve deeper into emerging technologies to further refine economic development applications for rural America.Objective #5--Fully Integrated Planning, Monitoring and Performance System. Ultimately, Building Communities envisions a robust use of current technology to transform rural communities' access to strategic planning tools and implementation support. Phase I will utilize a focus group with an existing client to field test the Phase I product framework, user interface and feasibility questions. Phase II will support the adoption of artificial intelligence and workflow management strategies that will further support the participants by providing: 1) simple, powerful tools for their input, 2) expert guidance for selecting strategic economic development plans that fit their community, and 3) regular progress monitoring and feedback tools which integrate with their existing technology including calendars, email and digital reports.Objective #6--Business Growth. Two points are to be made with Objective #6. First, Building Communities hopes to create "targeted user groups" that could eventually extend to a national advisory board that shapes best practices within each of the 25 economic development strategies. These (Virtual) Communities of Practice (CoPs and VCoPs) form networks of expertise within the economic development field that can enhance the Building Communities' product and create sales networks.Second, the success in Phase I of "Widening the Bottleneck" will create a product that maximizes the likelihood that rural communities can use the Building Communities product to not only create their plan but also to successfully implement it. Improving the "ease of use" sets the stage for success in Phase II where communities can purchase and utilize an entirely web-based platform to conduct Plan Week, write their plan, identify and utilize EASs and SPTs, and ultimately "do the plans themselves." This, in turn, creates the opportunity for a new business model for Building Communities that could have significant growth. Instead of being limited to 3-15 plans per year, Building Communities can capture an increased percentage of the estimated 815 plans done annually in the United States.
Project Methods
The primary method in order to test the development of the product to be developed through this project is to have a user interface with an existing community-based Steering Committee. The existing Steering Committee has an economic development strategic plan that they are working to implement. The strategies, initiatives and projects of that planning effort will be integrated into the new planning tool and through an iterative process, the software product will be improved.Efforts--Building Communities will use its "Plan Week" workshop process in order to conduct the interactive processes to develop and improve the product. This will also offer an experiential learning opportunity for the Steering Committee members.Evaluation--The efforts by the Steering Committee members to utilize the new economic development plan implementation tool will be evaluated based upon the ease and successful use of the tool to input strategies, initiatives, projects, human resources, technical resources, financial resources and performance measures into the tool. The actions utilized by the Steering Committee members will be monitored to determine ease of use and understandability of the new tool. The "percentage of successful utilization" of the various aspects of the tool will be measured in order to determine successful performance. Key milestones will include the percentage of successful user activities for all elements of the plan implementation tool.

Progress 07/01/19 to 02/29/20

Outputs
Target Audience:Our primary target audience to test the prototype of the software being developed is the Steering Committee in McCleary, Washington. As of this reporting, a meeting time and place has been set to conduct focus groups and user testing. This meeting will take place in October 2019. Additional methods and audiences are being considered for additional focus group and user group activity. Changes/Problems:There are no changes or problems to report associated with the advancement of this project. That being said, we can report an "emphasis" that has gone beyond the original understanding of the project at the time that the application was changed. This emphasis relates to the attention that is being given with respect to the prospective "users" of the new technology. The project has already yielded a series of 16 User Scenarios that are guiding the development of the software product. An emphasis on simplicity and clarity is the guiding principle as the software is being developed. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?It is anticipated that all of the goals of the project will be completed prior to the next reporting period. It is the goal to test the new software in October 2019 and to largely complete the project by December 2019 in order to direct our attention to how the successful completion of this Phase 1 project sets the stage for a successful Phase 2 application.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Progress has been made on four of the six objectives (Objective #1, #2, #3, and #5). Such progress is described for those objectives below. Progress on Objective #1--Improving Plan Implementation. All of the Example Action Steps (EASs) and Suggested Possible Tasks (SPTs) have been "unpacked" and reviewed for relevance to all of the Economic Development Strategies and Quality-of-Life Initiatives. All of this information has been copied into a database for immediate retrieval by the new software program being developed under this grant. The ease in which this information can be retrieved by future users creates greater value to the strategic planning product, and benefit to the economic development practitioners. Progress on Objective #2--Sharing Plan Progress. Several of the User Scenarios developed by this project are relevant to sharing plan progress. A thorough review of the volume and type of information needed by various audiences to understand the relative level of plan implementation has been analyzed and a "progress report" format is being developed and built into the new software. Progress on Objective #3--Connecting Communities to Funding Sources. The project team has concluded that the information maintained on www.grants.gov is formatted in a beneficial way to be integrated into the software being developed by this project. Over 2,000 sources of financial information are being analyzed and compared to the 25 economic development strategies. Ultimately, Building Communities intends to develop a strategic plan document template that better connects communities to funding sources and makes them more eligible and competitive for such funding. Progress on Objective #5--Fully Integrated Planning, Monitoring and Performance System. The software engineer for the project, 2B2D Design, is over 50% complete with the software prototype. The prototype will be tested by users in McCleary, Washington as per the original plan for this project.

Publications


    Progress 07/01/19 to 02/29/20

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Our primary target audience to test the prototype of the software being developed is the Steering Committee in McCleary, Washington. This meeting took place in October 2019. The prototype for the software was presented and feedback was received from the Steering Committee. In general, there was high satisfaction over the software product and a stated desire to utilize the product once it was complete and commercialized. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?During the project period, Building Communities secured a long-term contract for the delivery and implementation of 11 strategic plans. A training opportunity now exists to utilize the Phase I software product in order that improvements can be made in advance of the anticipated Phase II project. Training will include hands-on use of the software by communities that seem to successfully implement their plan over the period of 2020-2022. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? Progress was made on all six objectives. Such progress is described for those objectives below. Progress on Objective #1--Improving Plan Implementation. All of the Example Action Steps (EASs) and Suggested Possible Tasks (SPTs) have been "unpacked" and reviewed for relevance to all of the Economic Development Strategies and Quality-of-Life Initiatives. All of this information has been copied into a database for immediate retrieval by the new software program being developed under this grant. The ease in which this information can be retrieved by future users creates greater value to the strategic planning product, and benefit to the economic development practitioners. Progress on Objective #2--Sharing Plan Progress. Several of the User Scenarios developed by this project are relevant to sharing plan progress. A thorough review of the volume and type of information needed by various audiences to understand the relative level of plan implementation has been analyzed and a "progress report" format has been developed and built into the new software. Progress on Objective #3--Connecting Communities to Funding Sources. The project team has concluded that the information maintained on www.grants.gov is formatted in a beneficial way to be integrated into the software being developed by this project. Over 2,000 sources of financial information were analyzed and compared to the 25 economic development strategies. Ultimately, Building Communities intends to develop a strategic plan document template that better connects communities to funding sources and makes them more eligible and competitive for such funding. Progress on Objective #4--Refining/Updating Strategies. Ultimately, Building Communities hopes to broaden its market by making its product more accessible and usable to both smaller and larger communities than its historical "sweet spot" of populations between 3,000 persons and 75,000 persons. Great progress was made on the lower end of the scale. During the project period, Building Communities conducted its strategic planning process with ten communities under the 3,000 person threshold. The software product developed with this Phase I project was presented to nine of the local communities. On the upper end of the scale, communities above 75,000, more work needs to be done. Building Communities largely sees this as a planned outcome of its Phase II efforts. Progress on Objective #5--Fully Integrated Planning, Monitoring and Performance System. The software engineer for the project, 2B2D Design, is 100% complete with the software prototype. The prototype was tested by users in McCleary, Washington as per the original plan for this project. Progress on Objective #6--Business Growth. During the project period, Building Communities experienced business sales growth of 300% over the annual average of 2016-2019. The prototype software project was presented to nine new clients and the stage is set for the utilization of the Phase I product in order to extend growth over the next three years. The product envisioned through Phase II will further expand projected sales to an anticipated 10-fold increase over the baseline of 2019.

    Publications