Executive Director’s Corner

Over the next several months, WEDA will be holding several meetings with financial institutions and workforce, community, and economic development professionals as part of the CRA Network. The CRA Network is seeking your projects and ideas for potential presentation to the regional meetings of the CRA Network. Please CLICK HERE to view application.

Following the recent tragedy in Sun Prairie, we have invited city staff to provide an update to banking participants at the regional meeting in the Madison area. This provides an opportunity to understand the different efforts that are being undertaken by the community, residents, and the various state agencies to address the needs of the neighborhood and the businesses in the affected area.

To give you a sense of how the CRA Network projects and how the situation in Sun Prairie and potentially in your community could be part of a future application, here are two questions from the Federal Register CRA Q&A Document Published July 2016:

Individual banks have been quick to respond to the community needs. The CRA Network session will be an opportunity to enhance the already implemented collaboration and coordination in the community and identify any additional needs apart from the initial response. This session will be focused on working with officials to be sure the health of the local community and the long-term interests of each lending institution in the marketplace are considered.

Be sure to submit your application to the CRA Network so it can be part of our regional meetings in August, September, and October. Visit the WEDA website to learn about the meeting dates. As part of these meetings, a reception or lunch will be held to introduce the service to our regional professionals. In addition, WEDA will launch regional update and listening sessions to provide members greater access to WEDA staff as part of this effort.

New Networking Opportunities

WEDA recently created a new LinkedIn group for individuals new to the economic development profession in 2018. The online networking group will allow these professional to interact and discuss topics and best practices as they work on projects within your organization. It will also allow each of the participants to understand the diverse skills sets and expertise of the cohort. This group is by invitation only. If you have staff new to the profession that would be interested in joining this networking group, please have them reach out to WEDA at weda@weda.org.

Have a great rest of the summer. I look forward to you being part of WEDA’s fall programming and other exciting opportunities.