What's In It For Communities
What's in it for you?
The ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIP provides a practical set of tools for local governments to better position themselves to attract and retain industry, private investment, a sustainable tax base and quality, good-paying jobs.
The initial tool, the Economic Development Self Assessment Tool (EDSAT), is designed to help municipalities, counties, and regions surmount the "deal breakers" within their control that discourage economic growth and opportunity, to enhance the power of local officials to make positive change in municipal policies and procedures, and to better enable these communities to compete for critically needed private sector investment.
How other municipalities have used the EDSAT process and results
- Identifying strengths and weaknesses as well as opportunity and threats to economic development; EDSAT is essentially a SWOT analysis
- Knowing and emphasizing strengths in recruiting and marketing efforts
- Knowing and implementing actions to mitigate or eliminate weaknesses
- Defining or updating economic development strategies and goals
- Integrating the self assessment into a master planning process
- Learning more about the municipality and how each department can affect economic development.
What the Economic Development Partnership offers
- A robust and confidential Self-Assessment Tool
- Technical support from the Dukakis Center staff before and during the self assessment process
- Documentation of all responses recorded during the assessment and a color coded comparison of a municipality's responses to all others that have participated in the EDSAT process
- An individualized, written analysis based on your responses
- Benchmarks for local strengths and weaknesses
- Detailed guidance on where to focus efforts
- An on-going relationship between your municipality and the NLC Dukakis Center research team to provide support and technical assistance related to economic development
- Additional tools as they are developed
