What’s next for Make It Happen?

The list of projects hatched by The Rhode Island Foundation’s Make It Happen event last September is now so long it resembles one of the illustrated brainstorming sheets the 330 attendees to the event helped fill.
At Nail Communications in Providence, the ad agency is working with the foundation and Downtown Improvement District on a marketing campaign to fill vacant Class B office space.
At Blount Boats Inc. in Warren, seven people have new shipyard jobs after completing a training program custom-made for the company by the New England Institute of Technology as part of the Make It Happen-supported Shipbuilding Marine Advanced Manufacturing Institute.
And on the state’s highways, billboards celebrating Rhode Island business success stories have begun appearing as part of The Rhode Island Foundation’s own “It’s All In Our Backyard” advertising campaign to bolster the local self-image.
Befitting an event that promised to engage as many of the state’s key economic players as possible, the foundation has followed through with an “all of the above” strategy to spurring growth.
Unlike more traditional economic-development plans, the Make It Happen initiatives have spanned industries, methods, strategies and objectives to connect people and get them working together.
“I think now the dialogue has changed to focus on economic and business development,” said foundation President and CEO Neil D. Steinberg about what’s changed in the last 11 months. “While the statistics may not have changed yet, it is more of a topic that is getting a lot more attention. I think we engaged groups that weren’t as engaged before, opened dialogues between groups that didn’t work together and inspired more action.”
So does that mean there’s going to be another Make It Happen this year to build on these new projects?
With the anniversary approaching, Steinberg said foundation leaders are debating whether to do a follow-up and, if so, what it will be.
“I don’t think we are going to do the same thing again, but we are looking at what would be most effective to go forward and take rhetoric to action,” Steinberg said. After using the two days of Make It Happen sessions to collect ideas from and make connections between key private-sector leaders, the foundation committed $1 million on top of its usual charitable giving toward projects that emerged from those sessions.
As of the first week in August, more than $800,000 has been dedicated to specific projects, Steinberg said, and by the time the anniversary comes around next month, the remainder of the $1 million should also be spoken for.
It’s still early to try to estimate how much of a practical impact Make It Happen has had on the Rhode Island economy and even years from now it might be difficult to measure.
But Janet Raymond, senior vice president of economic development at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, said the investment and attention prompted by Make It Happen could only have a positive outcome.
“Anytime there is investment, good things happen,” Raymond said. “Make It Happen brought together very important conversations in economic development and many of the things they funded we have been involved in. A lot of the investments have been very complimentary and collaborative.”
As to whether a Make It Happen 2 is necessary, Raymond said she wasn’t certain and that it would depend on what the foundation had in mind.
So far, The Rhode Island Foundation has directly funded 16 projects discussed at Make It Happen and at least another five projects with origins in the sessions have been pursued independently.
Although Make It Happen prioritized private-sector solutions, sponsored projects do include government-related initiatives, but engage a wider and more eclectic range of objectives than a typical public-sector program.
Directly funded projects include:
• $100,000 for a collaboration between the state’s 11 institutions of higher learning to provide better economic data analysis to inform policymakers.
• $100,000 for Providence’s Emerald Cities program to retrofit five municipal buildings for energy efficiency. • $60,000 to conduct a survey of the state’s top 1,000 manufacturing companies to identify potential growth areas.
• $50,000 for MedMates, a health care-technology-sector collaborative.
• $50,000 to help the state develop an online building-permit system.
• $50,000 to spur growth of a local digital media industry.
• $50,000 for the Practico Innovation competition to encourage Hispanic, black and Asian Rhode Islanders to create new products.
• $25,000 for the downtown Providence office space marketing campaign.
Some Make It Happen goals are already done, like the bid to restore, in some form, the state historic-tax-credit plan ($10,000).
Other projects dreamed up at Make It Happen took off without financial support from the foundation, including the Hatch Entrepreneurial Center incubator, an internship program with the Governor’s Workforce Board, the Ocean State Angels investment group and Founders League incubator.
At NEIT, Vice President of Corporate Education and Training Steven Kitchin said he expects the Make It Happen-supported shipbuilding and manufacturing institute to pay even greater dividends in the next few months.
“Partners are ready to go. They have jobs they are going to need to fill – machinists and operators – and hope [the institute] will fill them,” Kitchin said. “We are working with General Dynamic and Senesco and the Rhode Island Marine Trades Association in creating a video for them to communicate in a competitive labor market.”
Meanwhile, as The Rhode Island Foundation leaders decide whether a follow-up event of some kind is necessary, they are promoting the $165,000 Our Backyard campaign to boost the state’s self-esteem.
“This is not denying we have challenges,” Steinberg said. “We are acknowledging unemployment is higher than we would like and taxes should be lower. That does not mean there are not great companies and institutions and individuals here.” •

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