Community Economic Development

Community Economic Development (CED) puts local people in charge of their ways of life and work.

It takes skill: community organizing, research, and planning; business and organizational development; finance; and networking. And the key is to ensure that development is sustainable both ecologically and commercially.

Albertans living in smaller communities need to find better ways to address the pressing economic problems they face, as a community. They need to find more effective ways of generating appropriate development opportunities.

Community Futures' staff are practicing CED - working to create a constructive response to these problems and explore new opportunities.

At Community Futures, community economic development programs and projects are facilitated and initiated by our Staff and Board of Directors to address the issues of economic development and diversification as well as community organization development and training.

Services available:

  • Research, development, & facilitation of CED projects
  • Research other CED opportunities
  • Community capacity-building
  • Board training
  • Conflict management
  • Presentations and/or facilitation of workshops
  • Strategic planning sessions

If you have any questions about these services or CED contact Community Futures at (780) 814-5340.


Rural Diversification Initiative (RDI) Approved!

The RDI initiative provides funds to Community Futures organizations for economic diversification projects in Alberta. The total amount available for project funding is $3.48 million over 3 years from April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2011. Total costs for each RDI project will be at least $100,000. RDI funding will cover a maximum of 60% of eligible project costs. This initiative is funded through Western Economic Diversification Canada and is administered by Community Futures of Alberta

Goals:

Rural economic diversification is a process with the long-term goal of building a community that has long-term sustainability, resiliency in the face of change, and a broad economic base with a variety of types of businesses and jobs. As a process, rural economic diversification is community-based and rooted in a strategic analysis of the community’s strengths and advantages. RDI funds will be used to facilitate informed, strategic investment decisions within coherent regional development strategies with a goal of regional competitiveness. All projects funded by RDI will be rooted in a community economic development strategy that is based on the region’s unique strengths and comparative advantages.
RDI will support projects under the following categories. Please note that RDI projects do not have to address all of these areas to be eligible for funding – targeting one (or more) of the following areas is acceptable.

Innovation

  • Support for and Promotion of Productivity Enhancement: This includes helping firms enhance efficiency or productivity through the adoption of technology, using new materials, using new processes, introducing lean manufacturing, industry training, encouraging the mobility of skilled labour to help pass ideas from one firm to another, improved access to information, shared equipment or services through a business incubator-type project, etc.
  • Support for and Promotion of New Products/Services: This includes the development of innovative products or services.
  • Support for and Promotion of New Technology: Examples include assistance with commercialization, support for inventors, technology demonstration sites, exposing firms to ideas and R&D from other countries, or linking firms to university and R&D companies.
  • Import Replacement: Examples include identification of gaps and business attraction, business expansion, reverse trade projects, and shop local projects
  • Development of New Markets: This includes export development or developing new markets in targeted sectors like procurement.
  • Innovative Access to Capital: This includes the development of local or cluster angel investor networks, programs that encourage innovative funding for business, and innovative access to growth capital

Cluster Development

  • Cluster Development: This includes assistance with industry development or assistance with cluster development such as developing business incubators targeted at a sector, assisting with building demand for a cluster product, organizing support services (like venture capitalists, market research companies, R&D companies), helping to build management expertise in a cluster, etc. Examples of emerging sectors include tourism, manufacturing, agri-food, nutraceuticals, or alternative energy production.
  • Value-Adding to Traditional Sectors: This includes assistance with value-adding in agriculture, oil and gas, forestry, and mining

All projects must be submitted through a Community Futures office. If you have a project that you feel could be eligible for RDI funding, please contact us.

Community Futures is working on or has completed a number of Community Economic Development Projects.  We are excited and happy to be involved in such innovative and vibrant initiatives.

Putting Podcasts to Work for Rural Business

Understanding the ever-changing needs of rural business clients, Community Futures has identified the need to deliver a flexible style of training/information to businesses and entrepreneurs. The purpose of this project is to develop a series of podcasts targeted at potential entrepreneurs. A podcast is a digital media file (usually audio and video), distributed over the internet for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The material is pre-recorded and users can check out the material at their leisure.

Activities include: hiring a researcher, producing 4 -7 podcasts, translating podcasts into French, marketing the podcasts, completing a feasibility study/business plans. The first podcast will be launched March 31, 2008.

Partners are: Community Futures Grande Prairie and Region, Community Futures Peace Country, Community Futures West Yellowhead, Alberta Women Entrepreneurs (unconfirmed), Le Conseil d'Economique, Entrepreneurs with Disabilities program, Peace Region Economic Development Alliance, the Grande Alberta Economic Region, and Alberta Employment Immigration and Industry.

The total amount for this project is $61,500.  The project started in July 2007 and was completed March 31, 2008. The first of seven Podcasts are complete. Visit www.podcastsforbusiness.ca to subscribe to the Podcast series.

South Peace Centennial Museum Marketing and Education Strategy

The South Peace Centennial Museum has been operating just west of the Town of Beaverlodge since 1968. The museum is already a tourist draw - as the site of the Peace Country Gospel Jamboree and a large collection of pioneer agriculture artifacts - but would like to increase the number of visitors.  In late 2005, Museum Board Members approached Community Futures to assist with project development and organizational expansion.

The goal of this project is to develop a Marketing and Education Strategy for the museum. Activities include hiring a consultant; identifying opportunities to increase knowledge and awareness of historical information; identifying ways to increase the number of tourists to the museum; hosting focus groups with organizations and schools; developing a Marketing and Education Strategy; and sharing the results.

In addition to Community Futures (via the Rural Community Economic Development Fund,) funding partners include the Community Initiatives Program, the South Peace Centennial Museum, and the County of Grande Prairie. The total project amount was $31,000.00 with a contribution from RCED for $21,000.00.

Grande Prairie Regional Tourism Association Destination Marketing Fund Study & Implementation

In early 2006, the Grande Prairie Regional Tourism Association asked Community Futures to assist the organization with strategic planning and organizational visioning.  From that planning came the desire to implement a Destination Marketing Fund in the region to improve its funding model and allow the association to do more effective marketing and maintain and expand its services to members.

Destination Marketing Funds are a method of providing sustainable revenue for tourism marketing such as a hotel or accommodation tax. The goal of this project is to study the concept of a Destination Marketing Fund for the Grande Prairie region. Projects activities include: hiring the consultant, establishment of a steering committee, development and application of a benchmarking questionnaire to assess how DMF approaches in Alberta and BC have worked; stakeholder engagement sessions to gather input; and completion of a report on recommended funding models, municipal differences, and legislative barriers to a tourism levy. Early in 2007, the project scope was broadened to also include the implementation of the fee in the region.

Partners include Community Futures, the Grande Prairie Regional Tourism Association, the Northern Alberta Development Council, the City of Grande Prairie, and the County of Grande Prairie. The total project amount was $51,000 with a contribution from RCED for $41,000.

Computer Gaming

The computer game industry is a $10 billion industry in North America and Alberta has some examples of very successful, internationally recognized computer game companies. The goal of this project is to build the computer game industry in the Grande Prairie region thereby diversifying the regional economy and building human resources (particularly youth). Grande Prairie has hosted Computer Game Development Expos for the past two years. This project will take the Computer Game Expo to the next level by helping to research best practices for the development of a database and industry flowchart.

Spearheaded by Peace Region Economic Development Alliance, project activities include: building community awareness, creating an industry flowchart and regional database of computer game industry occupations, creating customized materials for the CF self-employment program, and developing a bidding process for computer game industry contracts (this will be maintained by Grande Prairie Regional College).

Partners are: Community Futures Grande Prairie & Region (via RCED,) Alberta Human Resources and Employment, the Peace Region Economic Development Alliance, and Grand Prairie Regional College.

The total amount for this project is $11,550 with an RCED contribution of $7,550.00.  The project started January 2007 and was completed in June 2007.

River of Death and Discovery Dinosaur Centre Project Coordinator

The long-term objective of the River of Death and Discovery Dinosaur Centre is to develop, protect, and discover significant paleontological resources in the region around Pipestone Creek and to build a Dinosaur Centre which will attract tourists and educate and entertain visitors. To this end, the Steering Committee has been developing the concept of a Dinosaur Centre in northern Alberta since 2004. Ten studies have been completed to date including a Business Case, Fundraising Strategy, and Strategic Marketing Framework. The purpose of this project is to move the River of Death and Discovery Dinosaur Centre from planning to the pre-construction phase.

Project activities include: hiring a project coordinator and administrative assistant, creating an operational financial sub-committee to ensure effective bookkeeping, creating an operational education and research sub-committee to design paleontological and archaeological programs, ensuring that tourism agencies incorporate paleontological resources into regional tourism strategies, and hiring a marketing design consultant to promote the concept of the Centre and its early stage programs and services. As a parallel initiative to the RCED project, the Steering Committee will be initiating fund raising activities.

Partners are: Community Futures Grande Prairie & Region (via RCED and in-kind contributions,) the City of Grande Prairie; the County of Grande Prairie; the Town of Wembley; the Municipal District of Greenview; Alberta Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture; the Peace Region Economic Development Alliance, and Alberta Economic Development.

The total amount for this project is $140,000 with a request to RCED for $50,000 (36% of the total). The project started May 2007 and was completed March 2008.

For more information about the River of Death, go to www.riverofdeath.ca.

A Regional Capacity Building Strategy to Assist Inventor and Researcher Development

Grande Prairie Regional College and the Peace Region Economic Development Alliance recently merged their services to innovators into a single organization called the Centre for Research and Innovation. This Centre is located at the College. The purpose of this project is to create an "Innovation Ambassador’s Network" and to develop a "Innovation Expert Tool”.This interactive tool will describe the steps needed to move an idea through product development and commercialization through to the market place. The tool will then be linked to a database of expertise available to assist the inventor with each of the key steps. The Innovation Ambassador's Network will be made of resource people in the region who will be trained to assist innovators. Both the Network and the Tool will be offered through the Centre for Research and Innovation.

Activities for this project include: hiring a summer student to update the product development tool (initially developed by PREDA’s Innovation Network)and update the inventor’s expertise database (initially developed by CF Grande Prairie); amalgamating the two into an interactive tool called the Innovation Expert Tool and posting to a website; hiring a consultant to organize and host 3 awareness sessions, hold one training workshop for individuals interested in becoming resource contacts for inventors, develop a communications plan for the Tool, and develop a strategic plan to identify barriers to innovation.

Partners are: Community Futures Grande Prairie & Region, the Peace Region Economic Development Alliance, Grande Prairie Regional College, and the Centre for Research and Innovation.

The total amount for this project is $28,350.  The project started in September 2007 and was completed in February 2008.