As you know, the Chamber is in the middle of a major fund raising campaign. One of the initiatives being proposed is called Fort Collins Works.
By way of background, by most standards Fort Collins is a wonderful place to live. There is a long list of community attributes that make Fort Collins one of America’s best communities
However, as a college town, it can be a difficult place to do business. A general lack of understanding and appreciation of business combined with government’s impulse to over-regulate make it so.
To improve that situation the Chamber has taken a number of actions in recent years including elevating its lobbying program, endorsing business-supportive people for City Council, commissioning economic research and developing and advocating a 24-point job creation agenda.
The next step in advancing the business community’s economic vision of the community is a data-driven, multi-year, multi-pronged communications and economic policy initiative called Fort Collins Works.
Fort Collins Works is a tool kit for communicating basic economic development principles and the Chamber’s jobs agenda with the objective of influencing the thinking of council candidates, elected officials and the public regarding the local economy.
Fort Collins Works has 11 specific elements that can stand alone but are also integrated. Together they provide a data-driven economic vision of the community that is promoted to government officials, city council candidates and the general public. The 11 elements are: economic studies; economic policy including a Jobs Agenda, legislative scorecards and city council candidate questionnaires; communications including a website called FortCollinsWorks.com, downloadable Job Creation 101 information fact sheets, Job Creation 101 videos, Future of Jobs Summit presentations, posting voter research results (i.e. public opinion polls) relative to jobs and a Get Involved campaign. The final element is a public relations and advertising campaign to reinforce this information and drive public awareness and support.
To implement all elements of Fort Collins Works in Year 1, the goal is to raise $75,000. At this writing we’ve raised about $20,000 with two weeks to go in the Moving Fort Collins Forward! campaign.
I invite you to step up to support this effort by contributing to Fort Collins Works. Send me an email at [email protected] or call me at 970 482-3751 x 102.