|
Grow Minnesota! visits companies around the state in order to thank them for being in Minnesota and employing Minnesotans, to learn more about what they do, to provide direct assistance, if requested, and to find out what state and local policy-makers can do to improve the overall business environment and help companies succeed in Minnesota. Visits were completed by our 55 local chamber partners or their designees as well as the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. This year, the program visited nearly 850 companies.
Our primary purpose is to strengthen the bond among Minnesotan businesses and the communities were they are located. To this end, 33 percent of visits completed in 2009-2010 were revisits.
We obtained valuable information statewide on business conditions and the steps that can be taken at local and/or state levels to encourage business retention and growth. The results presented in this report recap what a large group of business owners and managers in Minnesota are actually saying about business conditions as well as their communities’ and the state’s business environments. Though we have spoken to hundreds of companies, the results reported here are not statistically valid since each local partner determines the companies it visits.
Who we visited
Grow Minnesota!’s partners select the businesses to visit. Each year, the mix is different than the previous year.
Return visits accounted for 33 percent of the total in 2009-2010, up from only 25 percent last year. We continue to make revisits a priority. They are critical to building the relationship among local businesses and their community. We expect revisits to increase in 2010-2011.
As in past years, the majority of visits were to manufacturing companies.
Table 1:
Manufacturing |
30% |
Other Services* |
13% |
Retail Trade |
12% |
Professional/Scientific/Technical Services |
8% |
Finance/Insurance |
7% |
Construction |
6% |
Health Care/Social Assistance |
5% |
Accommodation/Food Services |
4% |
Wholesale Trade |
3% |
Arts/Entertainment/Recreation |
3% |
Agriculture/Forestry/Fishing/Hunting |
2% |
Information |
2% |
Educational Services |
2% |
Transportation/Warehousing |
2% |
Utilities |
2% |
* “Other” includes mining, real estate, waste management
Visits to companies with fewer than 50 employees are down from last year. As you can see in Chart 1, 66 percent of businesses visited have fewer than 50 employees and 98 percent have fewer than 500 employees. The decrease in the number of visits to small companies can be attributed to the visits done last year as a part of the Get Ready to Grow program. Applicants were required to have fewer than 50 employees and less than $10 million in sales. The size of companies visited this year more closely aligns with those of previous years.
Chart 1:
Ours is truly a statewide program. See Chart 2. Last year we set our goal to increase the number of local chambers of commerce participating in Grow Minnesota!. This year, we increased the statewide reach of the program with the addition of 10 local partners – Blooming Prairie, Cannon Falls Area, Elk River Area, Isanti Area, Itasca Economic Development, Kanabec Area, Monticello, North Hennepin Area, Redwood Area and Greater Stillwater. With the new partners, we were able to increase our visits in central Minnesota. We still have work to do in northwestern Minnesota where the number of visits went from 6 percent last year to 2 percent this year. We unfortunately lost our key partner in that region, Thief River Falls. Strengthening the individual partner programs across the state is a top priority in 2010-2011.
Chart 2:
For 2010-2011, Grow Minnesota! will focus more attention on increasing the number of businessperson volunteers that go on business retention visits with our local chamber partners. Having a volunteer increases the effectiveness of the visit. The volunteer’s presence makes the visit a candid conversation between business owners and managers. That is critical to finding out what it takes to keep and grow the business in Minnesota. Volunteer participants also allow more businesses in the community to learn about each other. In addition, we will continue to focus on follow-up assistance. About one visit in eight triggers some sort of follow-up. This assistance has become a keystone in our program. This year’s one-on-one assistance helped to retain 1,293 jobs.* You can read more about the assistance we have provided in the “Business Expansion” section of this report.
* This estimate is for all of the last five months of the year. Prior to that, we were not collecting this information with sufficient specificity to report.