The Problem
We struggle to create jobs in Douglas County and Kansas.
Over the last 25 years, Douglas County is 74% behind the national average in job creation and 20th out of 20 peer communities. Here’s a break-down of the data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Our peers communities have a major university and sit between 20 and 100 miles of a major metro area.
On the whole, Kansas isn't much better. It ranks 40th out of 50 states in job creation.
The Consequences
This hurts us all.
An ailing economy results in:
Cuts to city, county and state-funded services
Rising residential property taxes (as sales and commercial property taxes fail pull their weight)
Flat median incomes with rising income inequality
Struggling business retention and recruitment
Diminished quality of life
Our citizens are frustrated and the root cause is our inability to grow the economy from within.
Increasing
Property Taxes
Diminished
Quality of Life
Recruit Expanding Businesses
Start & Grow More
Local Businesses
Our Options
Business recruitment is difficult without a strong local economy.
Possible solutions:
We can grow from within by supporting new business creation and expansion.
We can recruit expanding businesses.
Unfortunately, we have tried (and struggled) to recruit growing businesses because we lack the workforce, large infrastructure, housing inventory and resources required for large incentive packages. We should continue to try to recruit, but growing from within via entrepreneurship is a necessary precursor to growth via recruitment.
CORE’s Solution
We need comprehensive entrepreneur support.
We need a support system that helps ALL entrepreneurs (all stages, all industries, all demographics):
Get started
See the journey ahead of them
Make progress through stages
Measure their progress
2025
2040
Projected Outcome
15-Year Impact
We forecast that CORE’s programs will help entrepreneurs add $1.5B to the local economy between 2025 and 2040.