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SCORE Naples Goes Gardening With the EDC PDF Print E-mail
Written by Frank Friend   
Wednesday, 02 December 2009 00:27
Score Naples and the Economic Development Council of Collier County (EDC) are working together on the Economic Gardening Initiative, a program designed to help companies in Collier County, with between 10 and 99 employees, grow their businesses.
economic-gardening
Economic Gardening is an entrepreneurial approach to economic development first pioneered in Littleton, Colorado in 1989. The focus is on creating a nurturing ,environment for growing local entrepreneurs rather than "hunting" or recruiting businesses from elsewhere - it has been remarkably effective and now  Collier County companies are about to benefit. Score will be there to help.

The state of Florida has set aside $10 million for an Economic Gardening pilot program, $8,500,000 of which is for loans to 2nd Stage companies and $1,500,000 is for technical assistance programs to be administered by the Florida Economic Gardening Institute at UCF in Orlando.

Applicants for the state's Economic Gardening programs  must have: 10-49 employees, sales of $1,000,000 -$25,000,000, have been in Florida at least 2 years and shown increases in employment and revenue in 3 of the past 5 years. Selected companies must be in a Qualified Target Industry as defined by Enterprise Florida. . The indications are that 97 Collier County companies might meet the criteria - 3 have already submitted applications with the help of the EDC.

The EDC of Collier County is also providing opportunities for assistance to second stage companies, regardless of industry, employing between 10 and 99 employees and generating between $1 million and $50 million in revenue, through such methods as CEO Nexus Forums and CEO Roundtables.  The goal of both tools is to provide peer to peer mentoring opportunities, allowing CEOs to solve one another's challenges and grow more efficiently than they otherwise could have.

The EDC and Score will work together to locate second stage companies, then to develop formalized procedures to identify their needs and recommend and monitor improvement programs based on the Littleton concepts
 

SCORE Newsflash

Score Naples Honors Rambacher and Clapp
At its recent monthly meeting, the SCORE Naples chapter honored two very special volunteers with Emeritus status. Chick Heithaus made the Emeritus award presentations to HenryRambacherHenry Rambacher and Roger Clapp. Henry, who became the second Chapter Chairman some 20 years ago, is still an active volunteer today and RogerClappRoger,is usually found at the office and our workshops taking care of the administrative needs of our educational programs. We thank both these fine gentleman for their devoted service to the SCORE mission and particularly their contributions to the Naples Chapter.
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