PROGRAMMING AREAS
Balanced Use of Natural Resources
The Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development
The Pennsylvania State University
7 Armsby Building, University Park PA 16802-5602
814/863-4656(phone); 814/863-0586(fax)
Please send questions and comments to:
nercrd@psu.edu
BUSINESS RETENTION & EXPANSION VISITATION PROGRAM
CONTENTS (Part 2)
Local Roles in the BR&E Visitation Program
Overall Coordinator’s Role
Leadership Team’s Role
Task Force’s Role
Volunteer Visitors’ Role
Visited Firm Operator’s Role
LOCAL ROLES IN THE BR&E VISITATION PROGRAM
As with any successful program, someone has to be the spark plug for it. The spark plug for the BR&E Visitation programs is the Overall Coordinator (or Chair of the Leadership Team). His/her formal duties include convening the Leadership Team and serving as meeting chair.
Three or four other local citizens need to share the leadership role with the Overall Coordinator: Media Coordinator, Visitation Coordinator, Business Resources Coordinator, and Milestone Meeting Coordinator.
The Media Coordinator helps to coordinate media coverage.
The Visitation Coordinator helps organize the Task Force and Visitation Teams to prepare for the firm visits.
The Business Resources Coordinator helps organize the Team to respond to the firms’ urgent and immediate concerns (3).
The Milestone Meeting Coordinator helps organize the Task Force retreat, the business resources meeting, and the community commencement meeting.
All members of the Leadership Team participate in all stages, with each Coordinator serving as the quarterback at different stages of the program. The publication Local Leadership Team Manual gives more details on the roles and responsibilities of the Leadership Team and the Overall Coordinator.
The BR&E Visitation Task Force’s main responsibilities are to:
- Set the overall policies for the program (e.g., number of firms to visit, types of industries to include, number of visits/team, etc.).
- Recruit sufficient volunteers to conduct program (each Task Force member usually recruits one or two Volunteer Visitors).
- Assist in securing written endorsements from local organizations.
- Attend the firm visit orientation and visit at least two to four firms each.
- Participate in two meetings to handle the immediate concerns of local firms and to assist in the follow-up work.
- Review the research results and set priorities for long-term projects for BR&E (done in a four-hour mini-retreat).
- Assist in planning the community commencement meeting.
- Assist, as appropriate, in the implementation of the projects.
- Attend quarterly progress reporting sessions for a year after adopting the priority projects.
Each Task Force member will need to contribute about twenty hours prior to the community commencement meeting. This is spread over several months for less than one hour per week. Naturally, some Task Force members will spend more time because they become very involved in helping businesses with immediate concerns, but typically, this involvement is part of their "day-job" responsibilities. Each Task Force member’s specific responsibilities for ongoing implementation are arranged after the projects are identified.
Diversity of Task Force Membership
As illustrated, your BR&E Visitation Task Force should consist of five different groups of community leaders: (1) Business Leaders, (2) Development Professionals, (3) Local Government Officials, (4) Education Officials, and (5) other key Community Leaders. Your Task Force needs this diversity because each of these leader categories can contribute to the solution of local business development problems. For example, business owners can help the Task Force better understand the problems expressed in the surveys. School officials have been able to help start school/business partnerships and to reform educational programs to address business needs. Local elected officials need to learn about concerns with public services. And professional developers often have information on state and federal programs that are needed by firms. A recent research project has shown that groups that have a broad-based Task Force are more likely to implement their priority projects than those that don’t (4)
If you live in a sparsely populated area, you may feel that you can’t get everyone from all five groups. Experience has shown that almost every community can find someone in each of these roles. They may not live in your community, but their territory includes your community. Invite them!
Eligibility for Task Force
What skills do you need to be an effective Task Force member? Task Force members need to be recognized community leaders because an influential group is needed at various times during the process:
- When you need to handle the immediate concerns of the firms.
- When projects are selected.
- When projects are presented to the public.
Beyond being a recognized community leader, Task Force members who possess a basic understanding of the local economy and work easily with others will be effective.
| Whom Should We Invite to be on the Task Force? |
Business Leaders:
Development Professionals:
Local Government Officials:
Education Officials:
Other Community Leaders:
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Volunteer Visitors must attend a two-hour orientation. During orientation, the Leadership Team will help the volunteers identify their Visitation Team member and learn how to interview firm managers or owners. They also will be assigned the (two to four) firms they will visit. This requires between six to eight hours of total time. These visits are usually done within a two- to four-week period.
In previous programs, Volunteer Visitors have represented a cross-section of professions and organizations. In addition to business persons and economic development professionals—ministers, plumbers, and school superintendents have been Volunteer Visitors. Despite this variety, all volunteers should be enthusiastic about the program, influential in the community, and must understand the confidentiality of the information they will be gathering.
Local influential leaders who are active in the community are usually the best volunteers because they recognize the importance of helping to improve the community’s economy and well-being.
Volunteer Visitors should include people from both the public and private sectors. Volunteers such as chamber of commerce executives are important to the program because they have the resources, contacts, and leverage to address many of the concerns that industry reveals during the visits. And when your roster of volunteers also includes business owners and executives from the private sector, the program is more legitimate from industry’s point of view. The program is perceived as more of a community effort rather than a "chamber," "council," or "city" effort; in some communities, these labels could damage the credibility of the program.
Typically between thirty and one hundred firms are visited. Generally, Volunteer Visitors are instructed to interview the firm owner or operator, but if this person will be unavailable for a long period of time, then volunteers are instructed to interview the highest management official possible.
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