Energizing Entrepreneurs (e2) Institute

Every year, the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship offers a dynamic, interactive institute, called the Energizing Entrepreneurs (e2) Institute, based on its continuing research and long experience in the field.  Now a series of products developed from the success of Energizing Entrepreneurs (e2) and our new book, Energizing Entrepreneurs:  Charting a Course for Rural Communities, is available on a nationally distributed basis in an effort to provide more communities with the essential tools and resources to work toward becoming entrepreneurial.

Energizing Entrepreneurs (e2) Institute

The Overall Goals of any e2Institute are to promote a thorough understanding of entrepreneurship as a vital rural economic development strategy, and to give practitioners, locally elected officials, and residents the training and tools to take entrepreneurial action in their rural communities.

Specific Training Outcomes You Can Expect

  1. Participants will be certified and licensed to provide e2training.
  2. Participants will have begun to develop plans for implementing e2principles, and training, in their regions.
  3. Participants will have the opportunity to develop a beginning support network for   e2training, and more generally, to encourage entrepreneurship development in their regions.

How an e2Institute is Structured

From five years of experience, the Center has found that the following structure works best for a comprehensive exposure to entrepreneurship concepts, and adequate time for participant interaction and exercises.

  1. Getting ready:  Up to one day of preparation and planning with partner
  2. Institute, Part 1:  3.5 day program with at least two working evenings.
  3. Technical assistance:  On-going email and phone assistance up to 10 hours following training for a period of up to six months, provided by certified Center staff
  4. Institute, Part 2:  One day follow up session with participants to check progress, and provide next-level training
  5. Optional Technical assistance:  Additional TA available at cost

Every institute is tied closely to the Center’s hallmark publication, Energizing Entrepreneurs:  Charting a Course for Rural Communities.  Copies will be provided for all participants.

What Past Participants Are Saying About e2Institutes…

“If you are concerned about the future of your community, run, don’t walk to the next e2 Institute.  This training is guaranteed to open your eyes to the myriad of possibilities out there and how you can help reinvent your village, town or county.”
            -  Welthy Soni Myers, Senior Manager, Association for EnterpriseOpportunity

“e2 was emotional, intellectual and profoundly grounded in common sense. I was hugely impressed with the presenters and the content of the e2 Institute.  I felt motivated and prepared to preach the message of entrepreneurship as an economic development tool with every community, economic developer and community leader in my region.”
                - Stephen C. Holt, Director, SmallBusinessDevelopmentCenter, Chillicothe, Missouri

“The e2 curriculum is a lively immersion course in community-based entrepreneurship that works best when diverse community teams attend together.  Its focus on the various types of entrepreneurs in your community and tailoring your programs to create impact for them is especially useful to the people I have trained in rural North Carolina.”  
                - Leslie A. Scott, Director, Institute for Rural Entrepreneurship, North Carolina Rural Center

“Energizing Entrepreneurs is a key to promoting a positive future for rural citizens. I have sent my staff to the e2 training and I believe that it helped ignite additional enthusiasm for the potential of rural people and places.”
                - John Allen, Director, Western Rural DevelopmentCenter

For more information and to plan or schedule an e2 Institute in your area, please contact: 
Karen Dabson at Karen@e2mail.org

e2Policy Academy

The RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship has developed a dynamic, interactive model for holding effective e2 Statewide Policy Academies based on its research of other models and its work in six states around the nation. 

The Overall Goal of any academy is to stimulate and support expanded state strategy that focuses on enhancing the environment for entrepreneurial development in rural areas.

The elements for action by Academy participants include:

  1. Development of a team to shape the future of rural entrepreneurship in your state (entrepreneurs, community leaders, service providers, educators, policymakers) and identification of a lead organization.
  2. Pre-workshop activities – environmental assessment prepared by team members.
  3. First two-day workshop.
  4. Interim follow-up activities – next steps identified at the first workshop.
  5. Second two-day workshop.

The First Workshop –     

  1. Team Building – Builds trust and commitment through collective discovery and strategy development. 
  2. Shared Discovery and Learning – Develops a stronger foundation among the team for united action through shared learning and discovery about the principles and importance of entrepreneurship development.
  3. Preliminary State Entrepreneurship Strategy – Crafts a preliminary strategy to strengthen the state’s climate for entrepreneurial development by focusing on assets and entrepreneurial talent.
  4. Action Plan for Next Steps – Achieves group consensus on an action plan for next steps to be completed by participants.

Follow Up Activities

  1. Work Groups - Meet to conduct interim planning.
  2. Technical Assistance – Provided by Center staff to groups and to leadership.
  3. Group Report – Developed by work groups to report out on their recommendations in their areas of responsibility.

The Second Workshop –  

  1. Enhanced, Finalized State Entrepreneurship Strategy - Refines and finalizes the strategy from the first workshop to provide the base for subsequent action steps to create a better climate for entrepreneurial development.
  2. Communication and Implementation Plans – With adequate progress toward the finalized strategy, begins building communication and implementation plans (with work continuing post-academy).
  3. Continuation Strategy – Shapes a framework for continuing and sustaining this work into the future.

Formal e2 Policy Academies have been facilitated by Center staff in Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, and Texas. Elements of the Policy Academy have been used by Center staff with partners in Georgia, Kansas, Nebraska and North Carolina.

For more information and to plan or schedule an e2 Policy Academy for your State, please contact:
Karen Dabson at Karen@e2mail.org

e2Technical Assistance

For communities that have already participated in an e2 event, or for communities who have begun work on entrepreneurial initiatives, one-on-one assistance is available as you strive to launch your ideas.  Experts from the Center team can help you build your case, facilitate task forces, conduct additional strategic planning, provide essential research, and assist with key action plan development and implementation, among many other activities of your choosing.

If you have a specialized need, such as initiating a youth entrepreneurship program or designing a revolving loan fund, Center team members are equipped to work with you in these areas as well.

To set up your specialized e2 technical assistance, please contact:
Karen Dabson at Karen@e2mail.org

Energizing Entrepreneurs:  Charting a Course for Rural Communities

“The book behind the website,” Energizing Entrepreneurs is a joint creation of the RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and the Heartland Center for Leadership Development to present communities with a rich compendium of research, experience, stories, and tools about making entrepreneurial efforts happen in small towns and communities throughout rural America.  The book can be used as an every day, hard copy reference for people working within their communities to bring about positive, sustainable economic change.  Our goal is to make this information broadly available to all regions.  Book owners can be in constant touch with updates from the field in terms of practice and research as the companion website will be a dynamic tool that will grow as our knowledge base grows.

To get your copy of Energizing Entrepreneurs, place your order with:
www.heartlandcenter.info/publications.htm

The RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship

The RUPRI Center for Rural Entrepreneurship strives to be the focal point for efforts to stimulate and support private and public entrepreneurship development in communities throughout rural America.  By supporting practice-driven research and evaluation and facilitating shared learning among practitioners, researchers and policy makers, the Center works to encourage entrepreneurship development as an effective route to building prosperous, dynamic, and sustainable rural economies. The Center is part of the Rural Policy Research Institute, an organization dedicated to providing unbiased analysis and information on the challenges, needs, and opportunities facing rural America. To learn more about RUPRI, go to www.rupri.org.

 

 

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