Community sourced capital has become a big buzz phrase in the economic development community. As part of that trend, we see more programs and tools for growing entrepreneurial ecosystems that help community members connect with and support their local businesses.
Community sourced capital is the theme of The Local Crowd’s work, as demonstrated in the SBA-funded Wyoming Community Navigator Program that we completed in November. The program was organized as a Hub and Spoke model to increase access to capital for Wyoming
businesses. The Wyoming Small Business Development Center served as the hub and The Local Crowd was one of five spokes. During the two-year grant period, TLC hosted 5 regions that supported 17 campaigns, 16 of which came in the last nine months—raising a total of $94,601. Eleven of the campaigns are complete and five are still active. We are grateful to all of our host communities and entrepreneurs and appreciate the opportunity to showcase what crowdfunding can do to support local
business development.
One of our community host partners deserves a special shout out—Mike Shober, who led the efforts for the North East Wyoming platform. Mike came into the project midway through the grant period and hit the ground
running. He joined Energy Capital Economic Development as Executive Director last February, eager to integrate the TLC platform into his community and support local campaigns. He did all the right things—met regularly with campaign creators, connected them with other resources, provided outreach and marketing on their behalf, and spread the word about their campaigns to everyone he could think of. The result was more than $35,000 raised on the North East platform for four Wyoming organizations.
Thank you, Mike! We appreciate your efforts at building The Local Crowd for NE Wyoming!
