PRESS RELEASE:
Siouxland Interstate Metropolitan Planning Council
simpco@simpco.org
Office: 712-279-6286
SIMPCO ANNOUNCES NEW RESILIENCE TOOLKIT FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
Sioux City, Iowa – SIMPCO is pleased to announce the new Resilience Toolkit for small businesses, government entities, and development organizations. This disaster preparedness toolkit consists of strategies and actions to ensure ongoing viability.
Disaster preparedness is nothing new to businesses, governments, and development organizations. The well-laid plans to be used in case of fire, flood, or storm are commonplace. They help to provide a blueprint for action at a moment of crisis when an existing strategy can be a thing of comfort for those dealing with the unthinkable. Resilience planning, though, is another matter. It recognizes that disasters and difficulties will happen and that immediate response is necessary. It also acknowledges that long-term implications will require a different set of strategies and actions to ensure ongoing viability, whether for a business, a government, or a development organization.
This Resilience Toolkit seeks to provide community leaders, development organizations, economic developers, chamber executives, and business owners a framework for preparation that looks beyond the immediate triage required by disaster to the longer-lasting recovery. In a perfect world, that recovery is enhanced by the steps recommended within.
The toolkit dives into these key elements: your organization and management, your finances, and your customers. Assessing and reflecting on these basics will provide insights upon which a resilience plan can be developed. Then, a communications strategy for sharing that plan and supporting its implementation with partners and clients will be needed.
The toolkit is also aligned in such a way that you can go directly to key areas of interest, from money to management to marketing. It can also be taken as a whole — a blueprint for action.
At a time when the implications from the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt, there is a broad reflection on what was learned and what has been left unaddressed. With that collective experience and some new insights combined with collective foresight, this crisis can prompt better and quicker responses next time.
Find out more information about this exciting new publication that is helping Iowa’s businesses, governments, and development organizations prepare and plan for resilience by going to the website https://www.iowaresilience.com/.
This toolkit would not be possible without the support of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), which provided funding through the 2020 CARES Act. EDA, which resides within the U.S. Department of Commerce, is the only federal government agency focused exclusively on economic development.