Allegheny Conference On Community Development

Programs: The 2012-2014 agenda of the allegheny conference on community development and affiliates was built on three strategic priorities to encourage "sustainable prosperity" for everyone in the pittsburgh region: enhance opportunity, strengthen communities and energize tomorrow's economy. Following are the 2014 accomplishments tied to each of these strategies. Enhance opportunity the enhance opportunity strategy made the most of our region's competitive advantages by positioning the pittsburgh region as a global location of choice for individuals and businesses. Support business growth and investment celebrated the 302 economic development deals ("wins") by all partners across 10 counties, representing $2. 4 billion in capital investment and a total job impact of 8,700. The pittsburgh regional alliance secured 44 business expansions and attractions, resulting in 4,010 new/retained jobs and a capital investment of $495 million. Attract and retain talent doubled visits to the imaginepittsburgh. Com jobs aggregator website from the previous year to 30,180 unique sessions and 164,476 unique visitors (from july 2013 through july 2014). Celebrated one million jobs viewed by site users with a 4:32 average time spent on each visit. Created a monthly newsletter with a 34 percent average open rate among passive and active job seekers. Reached 14,290 twitter followers, with 38 percent of tweets re-tweeted; 3,280 facebook members/ followers; and 3,691 linkedin members. Launched marketing initiatives targeting high-demand it talent in the region and within a 500-mile radius of pittsburgh. Sponsorship of nextpittsburgh online publication and it focused events with strong it subscriber base. Sponsorship of thrival entrepreneurship and music festival with strong it following. Partnered with pittsburgh regional alliance to host it journalists from new york, seattle, austin and canada in pittsburgh to increase understanding of it employers and innovation in the region. Partnered with idg enterprises, the world's largest information technology media publisher (i. E. Cio magazine), and third-party digital behavioral tracking source, to digitally target it professionals within a 500-mile radius of pittsburgh with information and high-end, offer-based communications about career opportunities in pittsburgh. Showed immediate spike in website traffic (fully rolled out in 2015). Initiated campaigns to attract latino talent, primarily from puerto rico. "baseball and the burgh" sweepstakes targeted pirates fans living in a 300-mile radius of pittsburgh, brought 3,212 entries and 1,548 new newsletter subscriptions. Career fair participation in puerto rico in conjunction with universities. Build a diverse and prepared workforce convened and collaborated with 16 partners to launch hola pittsburgh to attract latino, specifically puerto rican, talent to pittsburgh based on pittsburgh regional alliance findings of educated and available talent in puerto rico in key employment and talent sectors with high demand in the pittsburgh region, including healthcare, it, financial services, and engineering. Kick-off event featured performance by world-renowned el gran combo at cultural trust's jazzlive festival. Event and surrounding activities garnered substantial news coverage in puerto rico and drove traffic of more than 7,000 prospective latino job seekers to the imaginepittsburgh. Com website. Focused marketing campaign in puerto rico generated half the traffic to imaginepittsburgh. Com in july. With vibrant pittsburgh and three rivers workforce investment board, initiated a systems-based program to increase employment of un- or underemployed african americans in pittsburgh; as of december 2014, 65 new candidates employed. Align business, workforce and education sectors to enhance competitiveness and individual opportunity published inaugural edition of the greater pittsburgh workforce quarterly, designed to analyze, present and contextualize primary and secondary regional labor supply and demand data in an easily digested format for employers, talent and media. Over a two year period spanning 2013-2014, secured input from human resources directors and higher education community through a series of imaginepittsburgh. Com planning/working group sessions to uncover best practices, determine common needs. Develop effective policy to improve post secondary outcomes successfully advocated for passage of hb 91, expanding eligibility of career and technical education for inclusion in the education income tax credit (eitc) program. This change will increase industry's ability to support career and technical education with additional tax credit availability for its contributions of equipment to schools. Sustained advocacy at the federal level for reauthorization of the 1997 workforce investment act resulting in the july 2014 passage of the workforce innovation and opportunity act. Reauthorization will usher in changes at the federal and state levels that will help modernize the public workforce system. Secured grant to hire a workplace fellow to map secondary and post-secondary education and training pathways for high demand middle skill jobs to create foundation for new advocacy strategies. This comprehensive view will be key to training and connecting the workforce to in-demand jobs. Strengthen strategic market outreach organized and executed three media study tours for national and international media focused on regional strengths in energy/sustainability and technology/innovation. Participating media included fast company, tech cocktail, the jerusalem post, network world and site selection. Launched a tech marketing strategy to raise the profile of the region as a tech hub. Organized a 2014 media roundtable, "pgh venture outbound: nyc," with pittsburgh technology council (ptc) in manhattan, which featured pittsburgh region entrepreneurs and nyc-based tech media. Media outlets that participated included editors/writers/producers from cnbc. Com, fast company, tech cocktail and mashable. Organized and hosted the "pittsburgh tech crawl" media tour, which will be recognized by the international economic development council excellence with an economic development silver award. Participated in outreach to san francisco with a pittsburgh delegation focused on translational research and on an hr benchmarking trip in collaboration with the ptc. Advanced the development of a downstream petrochemical marketing strategy designed to maximize the advantages presented by the marcellus and utica shale resources. Organized five outbound missions to market the region for foreign direct investment. These missions included visits to the uk, france, canada, portugal, philadelphia (for the fdi world forum) and new york (for the security innovation summit). Hosted 16 delegations in the pittsburgh region, including delegations from australia, brazil (2), canada (2), uk (2), france, germany (2), japan, norway, pennsylvania's office of international business development, portugal (which was in conjunction with carnegie mellon university's portugal inres program) and slovenia. Partnered with the water economy network to promote the region's water assets, including organizing and hosting - in collaboration with the german american chamber of commerce midwest - the inaugural german american water technology roundtable. Provide a robust gateway to national and global markets delta announced in september 2014 that it would resume its nonstop flight between pittsburgh and paris in spring 2015 for its seventh year and its fifth year since the revenue guarantee contract with the conference expired.

energize tomorrow's economy the energize tomorrow's economy strategy focused on building our economy and improving our environment. Build on the region's portfolio of energy assets while protecting our environment celebrated more than 31 region-wide business investment "wins" in the energy sector and continued to support the energy alliance of greater pittsburgh. Led successful "friends of netl" partnership to communicate the importance of federal funding for the national energy technology laboratory (netl). Worked to increase netl funding by $9 million in 2014. Initiated campaign to educate the public, media and lawmakers on the significant technological, regulatory and market forces that are threatening the reliability and stability of the nation's electric grid. Partnered with the national academy of sciences and the national academy of engineering to establish the grid academy program - a civic education program designed to raise awareness of the business implications of the challenges and opportunities in emerging grid technologies, develop regional understanding of this significant public policy issue and build knowledge so that regional opinion leaders can make informed decisions about these issues for their businesses and for public planning efforts. Improve the economic climate advocated for the competepa tax policy agenda including the phase-out of the capital stock & franchise tax (csft). (2015 is expected to be the final year of the csft. ) worked with the great lakes metro chambers coalition to advocate for passage of the federal water resources reform development act (wrrda), which is critical to our inland waterways, harbors and ports. Supported hb 1550. This legislation consolidates several business loan programs under the jurisdiction of the pennsylvania industrial development authority (pida) and renames and codifies the pennsylvania military community enhancement commission into law. Put more ready-to-develop sites in the pipeline secured $43 million in investments for a new regional site development fund that will finance site infrastructure. The fund was established as a follow up project of the power of 32 regional visioning initiative. Improve our healthcare competitiveness supported passage of hb 1846, legislation that helps to control costs associated with the state workers' compensation system to assure affordable, accessible, quality care for all. In particular, hb 1846 reforms the pennsylvania workers compensation act to address the higher costs associated with prescription drugs that are dispensed by a prescribing physician rather than a pharmacy. Awards and recognition awarded the international economic development council's excellence in economic development award for imaginepittsburgh. Com, in the "special purpose website" category. Site selection magazine named the pittsburgh regional alliance a "top u. S. Economic development group. " recognized with two "awards for communication excellence" by the association of chamber of commerce executive: grand award for the imaginepittsburgh. Com talent attraction campaign and website. Award of excellence for the "transportation funding advocacy campaign" created by the greater pittsburgh chamber of commerce.

strengthen communitiesthe strengthen communities strategy was designed to reduce disparity and remove government barriers to community vitality. Restore the fiscal vitality of municipalities provided leadership in managing and growing the coalition for sustainable communities, a statewide alliance committed to changing state laws to help communities address growing economic and budgetary challenges such as unfunded pension liabilities and unbalanced act 111 practices. Contributed substantially to the development and crafting of bills to reform public pensions and binding arbitration. Strengthen local government by organizing intergovernmentally shaped processes to implement alcosan sewer regionalization initiatives. Support sustainable transportation and infrastructure funding and a robust public transit system secured a formal joint endorsement by mayor peduto and county executive fitzgerald in january 2014 for a bus rapid transit connector between downtown and oakland. Accelerate community revitalization by aligning resources developed and launched an innovative approach to increased community investment - the strengthening communities partnership. Five regional community development corporations were awarded technical and other assistance. Four of these communities secured tax credit assistance through the pennsylvania department of community and economic development neighborhood partnership program: connellsville, mt. Oliver/knoxville, mckees rocks and wilkinsburg. Contributions from conference members will leverage nearly $10 million over six years to help the participating communities fully carry out their revitalization plans. Benchmark for our region's future convened leader-to-leader: pittsburgh to denver 2014 benchmarking trip for 100 prominent business, civic and public sector leaders in june 2014 to help develop the 2015-2017 agenda.

in addition to program investments held by the conference, accd also maintains several smaller programmatic funds. These funds tend to be opportunistic in nature or internally designated.