Guest speakers give Moses Lake businesses free advice

McIntosh, Cram to discuss grant writing, brand identities

Two guest speakers arrive in Moses Lake this week, ready to share free expert advice with local busineeses.

The Grant County Economic Development Council and Big Bend Community College's Center for Business and Industry Services have teamed up with the U.S. Census Bureau to offer a free half-day workshop on grant writing tools Thursday. Information specialist Cam McIntosh will be the facilitator.

In addition, graphic systems designer Casey Cram will speak with CBIS director Shelley Glendenning at the FYI Fridays! program Friday at Da Vinci's Ristorante to talk about brand identities.

McIntosh said that she will take people through the census data that helps drive key elements of grant applications.

"Census data is used to describe target populations or describe a community," McIntosh said. "It will help people identify a problem or a need for a project, and when looking at that, census data helps you look at what makes your community or target area different — low income families, older population, working mothers, overcrowded housing, high unemployment. "

McIntosh said the workshop will discuss the data and then give some hands-on experience so people can pull up and profile their target communities and target populations.

Caroline Spira, GCEDC manager of communications and research, said that the GCEDC is an affiliate of the Census Bureau, which means its proper duty is to promote the use of census data as well as promotion of the census itself when it takes place.

"After meeting with Cam McIntosh last fall during our annual meeting, I was really impressed with some of the information she was able to provide and thought that they could offer a workshop for funding as well as for small businesses to use census data to help make their business more successful," Spira said.

Spira said that the EDC gets a lot of phone calls from different community groups and public institutions like ports and cities wanting assistance in finding grants, writing a grant proposal or requiring demographic information for their proposals.

"We're happy to provide that, but we're also more than willing to provide them with the opportunity to learn how to use the tools available at the Census Bureau so that they can do that themselves," she said.

"What (the audience) is hopefully going to come away with is an understanding of their community and how to access that data, which is all available free at www.census.gov," McIntosh said.

Glendenning said that Cram's presentation will be an hour and a half and be an opportunity to help people who don't understand the whole logo situation.

"A brand identity is creating a focused, visual representation of an organization, business or community," Cram said. "It allows a business to quickly let other people know who they are and what they represent."

Cram said she hopes that FYI Fridays! attendees will get an understanding of why brand identities are so important.

"I designed the logo for Moses Lake, and I would love to see it embraced by the community, and to let it go and really work for (the city)," she said.

"We're bringing Casey to town and letting people know to come if you have questions, if you're angry, if you don't understand, if you don't like the fact that money was spent, if you don't know how to use it, if you think the city is trying to withhold it; come," Glendenning said. "She's the professional; she can talk to you about it."

For Glendenning, bringing in speakers like Cram and McIntosh are part of her vision to contribute to building Moses Lake to its fullest capacity through training and education.

"You help people grow into new levels of strategic thinking and planning," Glendenning explained. "My image is that over time, over the next year, on a pretty regular basis, we're going to be bringing some premiere people and work to town, and that's just going to become a regular part of what we do."

Glendenning said she really wants to highlight the guest speakers because they are high-caliber professionals at the top of their fields.

"It's just this continual deep sort of scooping the guts out and bringing these really powerful, experienced people to a region that otherwise they would completely overlook, because no one has been lobbying them to come over here and start contributing," she said.

The workshop is free but does require registration due to limited seating. More information is available by contacting CBIS at 762-6289.