Committees

Economic Development

Thriving Small Business

On September 23, 2013, the Regional Community Institute of Northeast Florida, Inc. (RCI) took up a challenge posed by the Northeast Florida Regional Council. Here is the motion they approved:

“Make recommendations to NEFRC on policies and actions that will help small businesses thrive in all seven counties of Northeast Florida. Determine the baseline for small business, review best practices and lessons learned in and outside the region, identify the desired outcomes that would make Northeast Florida the region in Florida the most conducive to small business startup, expanded employment and long term success. Identify the policies and actions needed to achieve the desired outcomes, making full use of opportunities such as those presented by the region’s Economic Development District designation. Partner with innovators that care about this topic, including SBA, SBDC at UNF, SBDC at UCF, One Spark, Chambers of Commerce, JaxUSA, the Microenterprise Working Group, etc., so that policies and actions are shared and have a greater chance of success. Recommend metrics to be tracked by NEFRC as part of its annual State of the Region report. Report results to NEFRC in October 2014.”

RCI assigned this work to its standing Economic Development Committee, with Art Graham as Chair. Links to baseline data suggested by participants and Committee members as potentially useful to Committee work will be posted on this page.

The Committee has no meetings currently planned