The Rural Business and Community Recovery (RBCR) Program was initiated in March 2021 with partnership funding from the (then) Ministry of Forest, Lands, Natural Resources and Rural Development (FLNRORD). The program directly supported the creation of 38 incremental jobs across the Southern Interior. These new positions significantly increased community and regional economic capacity and provided much needed support for rural businesses to accelerate business recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic.
The RBCR program has been tremendously successful in adding economic capacity to communities and business support organizations struggling to offer meaningful and timely support to businesses struggling to survive and ultimately recover post- pandemic.
This program has:
- Connected 26 Business Support Organizations and communities in a supportive network
- Involved 16 additional partner organizations
- Resulted in almost 3800 client contacts, and over 1000 advisory services being provided
- Helped create or maintain 434 jobs
Several thousand businesses have been contacted and offered support through sourcing of grants, referrals to relevant business resources, provision of business planning, marketing and e-commerce assistance, and a multitude of other support services. A total of 26 business support organizations including economic development organizations, Community Futures, First Nations business organizations, Chambers of Commerce, business accelerators and local governments are all participating in the program.
These Host Organizations each developed robust workplans and hired a combined total of 37 RBCR advisors working on the ground with businesses and in communities. This incremental capacity helped not only the Host Organizations demonstrate their value to their communities and businesses, the direct one-on-one business support helped business survival and recovery post-pandemic.
The true value of the RBCR advisors was realized as wildfires and floods added greater challenges to already beleaguered communities and businesses. By quickly pivoting, RBCR Advisors turned to assisting businesses with disaster preparedness strategies. Businesses were suddenly faced with outright survival and not so focused on recovery. Without the RBCR Advisors in communities, the info sharing on preparedness and business continuity would have taken far longer to disseminate.
Reporting from the Host Organizations indicates that many businesses took advantage of the supports provided by the RBCR advisors and would not have been able to take advantage without their direct outreach. In addition, organizations who were struggling to maintain relevant economic development data were financially supported by ETSI BC to obtain Executive Pulse, the BCEDA's client relationship management tool supporting economic development practitioners and organizations. This value-added financial support is a legacy contribution from ETSI-BC and serves to enhance the capability of organization to gather and analyze data and develop robust retention and attraction strategies going forward.
The RBCR program was offered to the three economic Trusts in BC. Each Trust delivered the program in its own unique way, but the goals and objectives of community and business recovery were the same. ETSI-BC focused strongly on stimulating collaboration and sharing of best practices between Host Organizations. To ensure optimized geographic reach, several Chambers of Commerce and other organizations partnered to deliver the RBCR program through shared Advisors. The program is now well-established and can readily be continued or offered in under-served communities, as the need for support has not diminished and in several disaster-impacted communities the need has grown.
RBCR advisors are provided with ongoing support and training by ETSI-BC. They meet on a monthly basis in facilitated sessions to share learnings ideas and best practices. This has been the "secret sauce" in ensuring that Advisors were quickly on-boarded and able to deliver services to communities and businesses. Our strategy was to provide a comprehensive training and orientation program for all Advisors and Host Organizations. This helped to build their knowledge base, create consistency in approach, and encouraged dialogue and collaboration between Advisors.