Executive Director’s Corner: Brian Doudna, EDFP
With a new year brings new opportunities for WEDA, as we strive to provide the greatest return for your membership dollar by providing services, advocacy and educational workshops that help bridge gaps in bringing needed resources to your community and projects.
A primary organizational focus this year will be to align the charitable, educational and research efforts of WEDA’s Foundation (Wisconsin Economic Development Institute) with key projects of the Association. This will be formalized in a services contract that will benefit both organizations and advance the goals of economic development.
Other exciting things happening at WEDA in 2020, include:
NDC Training coming March 10 in Milwaukee
In cooperation with the National Development Council (NDC), WEDA will be hosting a one-day workshop on March 10, 2020 at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation on Mixed Use Development. This curriculum will be provided by Tom Jackson of the NDC and is sponsored in part by WEDC and WHEDA. Registration will open shortly. For those with the EDFP designation, this program is designed to help you with your recertification process. Also, please remember that WEDA is a certified NDC trainer, so that the conferences and our Academy programs are also eligible for recertification points.
MOU with American Indian Chamber of Commerce of Wisconsin
In 2020, WEDA will be launching the Economic Prosperity Planning for Wisconsin Tribes. This series is in partnership with three Native American organizations (WIBA, GLITC and the AICCW-FACC). Having participated in several Native American programs over the past several years, empowering Native American Tribes to access and fully utilize economic development tools is critical to advance each nation’s economic prosperity. As you can imagine, this effort will use some foundational programming from economic development best practices but will be customized for the different structures, programs and process utilized or available to tribal nations and organizations in Wisconsin.
CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) Network – Conducting Research on Barriers
This year’s Governor’s Conference on Social Impact Investing will work to provide different models that embraces investments to advance social impacts, including broadband models that have been implemented through involvement of financial institutions as part of their bank’s CRA strategy. In addition, WEDA will implement a research effort that will be undertaken in concert with our foundation to gain the voice of Community Development Agencies in identifying specific gaps in various markets across Wisconsin that align with the eligible activities of the Community Reinvestment Act.
The Wisconsin Economic Development Association is working daily to become the organization and the association that you deserve as a partner to grow your great communities and our great state! We need your help in advancing awareness of our programs and services. I hope that together, we will be able to grow WEDA’s membership because of the valued services that we bring to our chosen field.
