NEOEDD wins $80,000 grant from state

Published 10:00 pm Monday, January 22, 2024

The Northeast Oregon Economic Development District has won an $80,000 grant from the state to continue its work to strengthen the economic environment for Wallowa County entrepreneurs.

The grant, from Business Oregon, will help the organization launch strategies to overcome the challenges facing county businesses, “thereby improving the economic ecosystem and increasing opportunities for the people and entrepreneurs in Wallowa County,” said Lisa Dawson, the executive director of the Northeast Oregon Economic Development District (NEOEDD).

In 2024, she said, the district plans to host meetings with entrepreneurs, business owners, and organizations to discuss and implement strategies designed to allow entrepreneurs and small businesses to succeed. And it will sponsor seminars and workshops to teach the skills needed to start or run a business.

The programs funded by the grant are the latest steps in the work the organization has been tackling to map out the economic ecosystem in Wallowa County — and to identify strategies to help entrepreneurs succeed.

“The NEOEDD has a successful history of supporting entrepreneurs and communities, and this project combines both of those things,” said Dawson.

The grant comes from Business Oregon’s Rural Opportunity Initiative. Dawson said the initiative came out of a recognition by the state agency that rural communities are often left behind in its plans.

Earlier funding from the Rural Opportunity Initiative, which seeks to support entrepreneurs and small businesses, allowed NEOEDD to create a report to assess the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Wallowa County.

Since the 1990s, NEOEDD has focused on focusing on entrepreneurship as an economic development strategy for Wallowa County, Dawson said, because of the significant number of small businesses and entrepreneurs in the region. Wallowa County also faces challenges for attracting new businesses from outside, due to its distance from airports, railroads, freeways or population centers that provide a ready labor force.

The economic ecosystem report, which was finished in December 2023, identified challenges that entrepreneurs and small-business owners face in Wallowa County. The district then went back to Business Oregon seeking an additional grant to help address some of those challenges. The $80,000 grant came as a result of that request.

Dawson said one finding of the report was that “entrepreneurs and business owners don’t know that resources are available for them to use.”

So, she said, money from the $80,000 grant will be used to bring together the organizations and people who provide services to entrepreneurs to discuss how NEOEDD and other business organizations “can be more effective in supporting entrepreneurs and letting entrepreneurs know that services are available.”

Another opportunity for growth is in the access to capital for startup businesses, Dawson said. “We also plan to support entrepreneurs who are seeking capital to raise funding from neighbors and friends through the KIVA lending platform and the NEOEDD’s loan programs.”

Dawson said KIVA is a lending platform that’s accessible to businesses that might not be good candidates for traditional loans or lack collateral. She said it’s unique because it combines crowdfunding and a traditional lending platform.

One surprise in the entrepreneurial ecosystem assessment report, she said, was a desire from business owners and entrepreneurs for a directory of local businesses.

Dawson had a solution to that, but she didn’t know if it would be accepted: “One way to obtain a directory of businesses would be to have a business-license requirement,” but she added: “I don’t believe that would be a popular solution.”

She noted that the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce provides a registry of its members and makes referrals to businesses, but not every business joins the chamber.

Next stepsThe Business Oregon grant will also allow NEOEDD to continue offering administrative support for the Wallowa County Regional Rural Mainstreet Program, which seeks to revitalize downtowns in rural communities.

“We have two main goals,” Dawson said: “To enhance the entrepreneur ecosystem by strengthening the connections between service providers, the chambers of commerce, and the small business development center. And by providing services to entrepreneurs for free, or at low cost, and by making services and resources more available and well-known.”

Dawson said the grant from Business Oregon was less than what the organization requested, and so NEOEDD plans to follow up with Business Oregon to learn why the request wasn’t fully funded.

But she emphasized that the organization was pleased to receive the $80,000.