Greetings and welcome to the first Friday in March! Remember, this weekend is that joyful right of “almost Spring” where we lose an hour to reset Daylight Savings Time – enjoy your 23-hour Sunday!

 

Thanks to everyone who made our March Board of Directors meeting yesterday afternoon! It was great hearing Lynlei’s take on the Lincoln County real estate market and learning about Newport’s Economic Mobility program from Allyson West. It was also decided by consensus that we’ll strive to have three in-person meetings per year, with one of those being the annual meeting – staff will look at the calendar going forward and will report back.

 

We’ve got less than a week to go until our fourth annual Lincoln County Economic Summit. This year, it’s an eight-hour event featuring 24 speakers! The team feels dialed-in, but next week is sure to be crazy. The whole team will be on-site at Spyglass on Wednesday afternoon to set up and test all the technology (it all comes down to AV in the end), and then it’s off to the races early Thursday morning. We’ll see you on the other side!

 

Here’s our weekly team update:

  • Blue Economy/O2IH
  • Economic Mobility
      • Upward Mobility Framework – Paul and Allyson attended an overview webinar from the Urban Institute on their Upward Mobility Framework and how it applies to the Economic Mobility programs throughout the US funded by the ICMA grant. Here’s a link for those interested: https://upward-mobility.urban.org/toolkit-increasing-upward-mobility
  • Entrepreneurship
      • Cascades West Innovation Hub – Paul met with the regional lead organizations today to share updates and news of upcoming events through October. There was also a discussion about adjusting the regional lead deliverables not that everybody has a clearer picture of the work ahead over the next year.
      • EDA Grant – Paul met with Rural Prosperity Partners to discuss a few budget questions on our grant. All that’s left is to receive feedback from Wes Cochran at the EDA, make any suggested tweaks and then submit the application.
      • Rural Opportunity Initiative – Paul met with Kristin Monahan from Kelley Nonprofit Consulting (KNC) on Thursday. As part of our ROI grant, EDALC receives 50 hours of consulting from KNC. It looks like the most impactful project work we can do with them is a comprehensive fund development plan focusing on our three major funding sectors: public sector, business sector and aligned grants. The next step is KNC preparing for us a potential project outline.
  • Core Economic Development Services
  • Lincoln County Economic Summit – Sarah led us through a review of remaining tasks/supplies during the team meeting on Wednesday, fielded last minute registration requests, sent setup details to resource tables, tracked down pics and bios for speakers, and coordinated with Spyglass. Stacie worked on the event web page, tabling org graphics, speaker packet layout, coordinated with the event photographer, and posted a final sponsor recognition to social media. Paul and Sarah tested the new microphones and Leslie coordinated table setup with Thompson’s Sanitary.
      • Oregon Prospector – Sarah updated listings on Oregon Prospector and added new ones.
  • Community Connecting
  • Rural Community Builders Collective (RCBC) Grant Application, Planning, and Communications – This week, the Kelley Nonprofit Consulting team and lead applicant, High Desert Partnership, submitted the New Pluralists Breakthrough Fund application on behalf of the RCBC. It was an honor to be invited to apply as a national finalist (one of 45 out of more than 250 nominations), and now the RCBC awaits news on two national grants. In the meantime, Leslie’s collaborating with the RCBC and Max Gimbel at The Ford Family Foundation to plan this year’s RCBC meetings. She’s compiled group feedback on preferred topics for the 5 remaining 2026 meetings. One of the elevated topics centers on Economic Development, so Leslie started compiling this document that highlights regional, national, and international efforts that demonstrate the overlap between Economic Development and Rural Community Building (or ecosystem-building) Approaches. Now, every time someone discovers a new Economic Development plan, strategic priority, model or approach that makes them think: “that’s what the RCBC already does,” there’s a place to add that effort to the growing evidence that rural community building = thriving rural communities = thriving rural economies. 
  • Organizational Management
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Stacie managed EDALC social media and completed the Q4 2025 Media Report.
  • Admin
      • New Director Onboarding – Paul met with Lisa Norton on Monday afternoon to get her up to speed on all things EDALC.

 

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! Have a wonderful weekend, and we’ll see you at the Summit next week!

 

Cheers,

 

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