Offerings
Implement BR&E in your community
Over 60 Minnesota communities have done it. The process takes about 2-3 years and involves commitment to business retention and expansion from your community members and professionals. But in the end, your community will be truly engaged in a business retention and expansion plan.
Extension provides guidance and support. We will:
- guide recruitment of your BR&E Leadership Team and Task Force.
- adopt a survey of businesses unique to your local issues.
- train volunteers who visit local businesses to conduct the survey.
- help you respond quickly to business concerns that arise (aka “red flags”).
- tabulate and analyze the results of the survey.
- generate suggestions for local action from economic development experts.
- deliver a comprehensive report built upon results.
- facilitate a community meeting to help prioritize projects.
- stay in touch as you implement the plan.
Your community can make it happen
Become a BR&E consultant
Business Retention & Expansion Consultants work in communities to implement the BR&E Strategies program. BR&E consultants are typically economic development professionals, local leaders or private consultants. They receive certification upon successful completion of a 16-hour training that will help them mobilize volunteers and conduct the program.
At the conclusion of the course, participants will understand:
- Where a BR&E program “fits” in a local economic development strategy.
- How to identify local leaders to serve on a leadership team and task force.
- How to conduct effective firm visits and train others to make visits.
- How to write a plan of work to implement and guide the program.
- How to identify and resolve issues of immediate concern to local business.
- How to develop a plan with effective implementation strategies.
Online consultant course.
3-day consultant course.
What participants say about the BR&E Consultation Course.
Become a BR&E Report Writer
Writers of BR&E reports analyze survey data and prepare a report that communities want and will use for years to come. By the end of the course, participants will know how to:
- Summarize survey data and report the results
- Find and use secondary data
- Identify the characteristics of good BR&E visitation surveys
- Structure a report so that it provides great benefit to a community
- Describe processes for developing recommendations and setting priorities
- Prepare a summary and a community report
- Offer recommendations to a community on how to use the report — so it doesn’t just sit on a shelf!
Read BR&E Reports.
Dates & information about the next BR&E Research Reports Course.
Contact us about this course.
Extension Support for Local BR&E Research
If you plan to conduct local research that helps you retain and expand your local businesses, here are some ways Extension can help:
Workshops: Extension can help your community think about ways to plan for local business retention and expansion.
- Assessment: A workshop can help your community decide whether the Busienss Retention and Expansion Strategies Program is right for you.
- How to conduct BR&E visits.
- Setting priorities and taking action -- a planning retreat.
Contact a regional educator to request a local workshop.
Research Services. Extension can:
- Adopt a survey instrument to your situation.
- Tabulate and analyze the data that we customized.
- Provide a complete research package (including survey instrument, data tabulation/analysis, campus research review meeting involving University faculty to develop suggested projects, a four-chapter research report, summary report and a planning retreat. (See Workshops.)
Contact our BR&E Leader to talk about these services,
or
Contact a regional Community Economics Educator.
