Greetings and welcome to Friday!

 

With next week being Thanksgiving, we’ll be shooting out a shorter update on Wednesday afternoon.

 

The Community and Economic Development Grant deadline is 5pm on Monday. As of this afternoon, we’ve got 11 applications submitted with quite a few more coming in before the deadline. Early next week, Paul will send out some date options for the January grant scoring meeting (remember that the Board decided to not have a December BoD, but score the grants in January – it’ll give the Board more time).

 

Paul attended the Small Business Management for Nonprofits class this Wednesday – the topic was fundraising, which was facilitated by nationally-known fundraising guru Tammy Zonker (how DOES the SBDC get such great instructors?!). Paul came away with some actionable steps on how to analyze past fundraising data and develop a positive roadmap forward.

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

 

    • Partner Support/Community Support 
      • CCFW – Sarah attended a CCFW executive committee meeting.
      • CWEDD – This week, Paul chaired a meeting of the Cascades West Economic Development District Executive Committee to prepare for the December 11th full board meeting. The EC also discussed modifications to the CWEDD by-laws to allow for economic development and higher education folks to join the overall board.
  • CWEDD Video – Sarah filmed her final out of office interview (will interview Paul next week) for the CWEDD video at the Tallwood Design Institute at OSU’s campus. She got a tour of their research lab for creating new products and building solutions using Mass Timber and other sustainable forest products, and this was featured in the video because they received EDA funding to support the development of the lab and multiple research projects.
      • City of Newport – This week, Paul worked with the City of Newport (Nina Vetter and Cathie Rigby) and Rural Prosperity Partners to secure a commitment from The Ford Family Foundation’s GRO program for $45,000 in matching funds for the EDA Disaster Supplemental grant we will be submitting in the coming weeks. That commitment brought matching funds up to the desired $60K goal. (Paul here – what a wild and crazy tale to get us over that hurdle – best told over a pint – but BOY is it awesome working with the team at Newport – above-and-beyond rockstars!). Stacie provided copywriting support.
  • OCWCOG – Sarah joined the OCWCOG Loan Program Advisory Committee, which advises their Business Lending program. It is a two-year term and the committee is made up of six members of the COG’s executive committee and one member (now Sarah) from either commercial banking or economic development.
      • OSU-Hatfield – Paul pulled together all of the final OCCC DACUM documents for the Aquaculture Technician and Maritime Technician projects and got them off to Mark Farley at Hatfield. It seems that there is an effort underway to reinvent the wheel in that space – and Mark wants to bring the efforts in alignment together.
  • Blue Economy/O2IH
      • Leadership Lincoln – Paul was part of a Blue Economy panel (two BE panels over the course of the day) for the November Leadership Lincoln session.
      • O2IH Website – Stacie put the finishing touches on the Seafood Butchery Program story based on Paul’s feedback.
  • Broadband
      • Broadband Action Team -Paul attended the monthly BAT on Thursday. So far, 18 states have had their BEAD funding approved by the Feds – Oregon’s request (consisting of 27 ISP applicants) has not yet been approved. It also looks like funding for digital equity work (the funding that was on the other side of BEAD infrastructure work) is now gone at the federal level, switching the funding burden to local and statewide efforts.
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • Community and Economic Development Grant Program – Stacie reviewed applications for budget and letter of support inclusion, sent confirmation emails, and updated the EDALC application tracker. 11 Applications and counting! The goal is to get the applications and scoresheet to board members by end of day Friday December 5th with the goal of meeting to review and finalize recommendations in January.
      • CPACE Incentive Program – Paul met again with Don Schulz to discuss the possibility of having Lincoln County implement the CPACE program for commercial development (it’s an incentive program that provides access to lower cost partial project funding for integrating energy saving technologies in construction). Paul will reach out to the commissioners to gauge interest.
  • Economic Report Update – Sarah continued to review the latest (and potentially final) draft of the Lincoln County Economic Report update.
  • Economic Summit – Sarah reached out to Spyglass to reserve their event space again for the 2026 Lincoln County Economic Summit.
  • Community Connecting
      • Newport’s 10-Year Sustainable Destination Management Plan Advisory Team – Leslie was invited to represent EDALC on this team effort led by Willow Ryon at the City of Newport and consultant team Crosscurrent Collective. The group convened for the launch meeting on Monday, and the multistage process ahead includes data and survey gathering, plan development, and plan finalization before project closeout. Soon, Leslie will be sharing links to surveys for both visitors and stakeholders, and the team will appreciate the EDALC board’s help sharing those out to their networks for wide participation. If anyone’s interested in more details on the project or has Tourism plan strategies to share with the team, please let Leslie know.
      • See Leslie’s full weekly update: November 21, 2025 EDALC CC Weekly Report
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication  Stacie created posts for the Rogue Rapid Response Session, re-posted/shared relevant partner/regional posts on various social media channels, and created the usual IG + FB story roundup of central coast goings on for Friday.
  • Admin – Stacie attended her third Leadership Lincoln meeting on Wednesday. The team met on Thursday to share updates and review our top priorities going into December. We know time is going to fly by.

 

That’s it for this week, thanks for ALL that you are doing out there. Keep us posted if you have anything you want us to share – we love hearing from you!

 

Cheers,

 

-The EDALC Team (Paul, Sarah, Leslie and Stacie)