SCOPE OF PROJECT

The Design Challenge

* Inspire, empower, and support entrepreneurs within the Certified Entrepreneurial Communities.

*Communicate each community’s unique personality, resources, and opportunities for entrepreneurship

*Celebrate community entrepreneur success stories

*Highlight regional quality of life available to entrepreneurs while maintaining excellent connectivity and proximity to regional and global markets; (think culture, authenticity, creative class, knowledge economy, sustainability)

*Entrepreneurs are often visionary and big-idea oriented. The site needs to reflect this but also convey success requires hard work and strong fundamental business acumen

*Successful entrepreneurs are able to make their products sticky – this site should be sticky

*It needs to be locally accessible at the same time as being globally sophisticated

*This site should be so successful in supporting and promoting entrepreneurship that it becomes recognized as a model

*Include a youth component that supports XXX promoting entrepreneurial thinking and innovation with youth in their communities (ages: high-school and college)

Additional Details

*The site will initially covers 14 ABC communities across WNC and will need the capability to be extended to cover entire 23-county XXX region

*Site will include an overview of the XXX program and information on how new communities can get certified

*Site must be powered by a content management system that is easy to use and enables XXX staff to maintain content

*Vendor is expected to provide copy writing for site content; XXX will provide the information necessary to generate the site copy

*Site must include site tracking software like Google Analytics

Primary Audience

* Entrepreneurs (internal to WNC and external) that are starting a business or seeking to grow an existing small business

* XXX community stakeholders

Secondary Audiences

*People looking for a good place to start a business

*Policy Makers

*Entrepreneur Support Organizations

*Large Industry

*Investment Communities

Desired Actions

*Visitor learns about entrepreneur support resources (to be measured via visitor click through patterns)

*Contact a community’s designated contact person

Possible Features (we want to hear your ideas as well!)

*Community pages: each community being able to communicate its personality and the type of entrepreneur opportunities want to promote; their local resources; contact information; link to their own websites if applicable

*Entrepreneur spotlights: rotating between all spotlights the top level; limited to specific communities at the community level; each spotlight to be linked to an entrepreneur

*Expandable entrepreneur resource guide that details the various support organizations and programs available to entrepreneurs in XXX communities

*Integration with major regional entrepreneurial event calendars (Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council, Mountain BizWorks, etc)