On one hand, it’s survival, and on the other, it’s opportunity.
With state funds disappearing from regional economic development organizations, groups like North Carolina’s Eastern Region are transitioning from public to private entities. Entering the second phase of the transition, the next 16 months are key to maintaining the NCER’s new form maintains a viable regional footprint, according to Lenoir County Commissioner Craig Hill.
“The Southeast region has already formulated its plan – from the Wilmington area – and there’s a lot of things that are going on at this point in time,” Hill said.
He’s one of the newer members of the NCEast Alliance Board of Directors, overseeing the transition process. Work’s starting on phase two of the three-phase process, scheduled for a strict deadline of July 1, 2014.
“Phase two is the beginning of hiring organizations to raise capital for the transition from the public to the private nonprofit,” Hill said. “So, in order to make it a viable resource, I think the goal is somewhere around $4 million to raise from the region.”
The NCEast Alliance brought in National Community Development Services to head up phase two. NCDS, based out of Atlanta and assisting chambers of commerce and economic development organizations nationwide, provided NCEast a framework for the transition during Phase One.
“We’re a national firm that helps economic development organizations – a lot of them who are transitioning from solely public to public-private, (which is) ostensibly what’s going on here,” NCDS President Tom DiFiore said.
He continued, “And, most of what we’re going to be doing early – and we haven’t really, actually, gotten engaged yet – we’ll be, for lack of a better word, bringing private sector stakeholders around the table to help craft a vision of what they want that organization, what they want the region to be, from an economic standpoint.”
DiFiore added they were on the lookout for people who wanted a vibrant, rolling regional organization.
A statement from NCER announcing the move to phase two noted in the last fiscal year, NCER facilitated 52 projects, including 13 new projects in the first quarter of 2013 throughout the organization’s 13 member counties.
Hill said there would be no wavering in the deadline for the complete transition to a private nonprofit. It has to work by the middle of 2014, or it doesn’t.
“That’s an absolute, is to move in that direction.” Hill said. “This is to get the capital to continue moving over the long haul.”
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.