WALLOWA COUNTY BUSINESS FACILITATION CELEBRATING A DECADE OF ASSISTING LOCAL ENTREPRENEURS 2001—2010

“WCBF” was formed in 1999-2000 by a group of local volunteers for the purpose of bringing the Sirolli Institute’s unique, grass roots concept of locally based business development to Wallowa County. The program began operation with a 35-member board of directors, Gail Hammack as Chairperson and Myron Kirkpatrick as Business Facilitator on January 1, 2001. This year, WCBF is celebrating its tenth year of helping local residents and persons who would like to move to the County start new businesses and expand, improve the performance of or purchase existing businesses. By almost any measure, WCBF – working collaboratively with North-east Oregon Economic Development, Wallowa Resources, local lenders and others actively involved in local business support activities – is the County’s most deeply rooted and successful business development program.
During the past nine years, Myron has provided one-on-one introductions of the WCBF program to 1,025 local residents, people who have moved away and would like to return and visitors who would like to relocate to Wallowa County. Many of these people have subsequently become WCBF clients or referred others to the program. As a result, Myron has actually worked with 692 individuals, couples or groups to explore their ideas for new or existing local businesses. Always, the core emphasis has been on thorough analysis of the opportunity, careful research and planning and recognition of the fact that there are few, if any, individuals here or anywhere else who have the broad based knowledge, skills and passion to start and successfully operate a business without a strong supporting team that covers marketing and finance as well as operations.
The 692 clients served by WCBF have opened 88 new businesses in Wallowa County since 2001, expanded the operations of 24 others and acquired 19 existing businesses that were for sale. Seventy-five of these clients have completed full or partial business plans and 27 are known to have obtained loan or grant financing as a result. Over the nine-year period, an estimated 159 full-time equivalent jobs have been created and another 539 touched by WCBF services. And the best news is that approximately 65% of the new, expanded and acquired businesses are still in operation today.
The hospitality, service, retail/wholesale and manufacturing/fabrication sectors have each accounted for approximately 16% of the total clients served by WCBF over the past nine years, for a total of 64%. Agriculture/ranching and health care are the other significant sectors at 7% and 5%, respectively. Although new ideas predominate, the program has served 225 existing businesses as well.

For more information contact: Myron Kirkpatrick

Email:myronk@eoni.com