Business Retention and Expansion Final Report - City of Brantford

17Project CoordinationVolunteersThe Business Retention and Expansion (BR+E) survey project was driven by a partnership with the municipal EconomicDevelopment and Tourism staff members and key community stakeholders and project partners that formed the BR+ELeadership Team which was responsible for steering the project. The BR+E Leadership Team worked in concert withinput from the local Tourism Advisory Committee and Downtown Brantford Business Improvement Area (BIA) Board ofDirectors. The BR+E Leadership Team also engaged several municipal staff advisors to assist with providing feedback tothe surveying process. (Appendix 2 & 4)The BR+E Leadership Team met a key interval points throughout the course of the project, from October 2006 to June2007 and were provided orientation and training by the staff team of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food & RuralAffairs (OMAFRA) – Rural Economic Branch. (Appendix 2)The BR+E Leadership Team provided suggestions and input to the communications plan for the project, and theformulation of the Community Questions that were included in the main survey instrument. These volunteers were alsoinvolved in a retreat, one for the tourism sector (May 2007) and one for the downtown district of Brantford (June 2007)to review the aggregated data as a result of they survey in an effort to develop strategic actions and next steps. Duringthis period both the Tourism Advisory Committee and the Downtown Brantford BIA Board of Management also had anopportunity each to review the aggregated data and provide input to potential Strategic Actions as well. (Appendix 3)Fifteen local community-based volunteer scribes who assisted the interviewers by attending the interview sessions andcapturing the verbal comments for each survey supported the BR+E staff project team. These volunteers were trainedand signed a confidentiality waiver for their involvement in this project in which they contributed collectively more than300 hours of their time to this effort and are commended for their assistance with this project. Furtherassistance was also garnered from some of the scribes who also helped with careful data entry work for the project.Their collective assistance with this project was a contributing factor to ensuring that 330 surveys were completed andentered into Executive Pulse, OMAFRA’s standardized and secure web-based survey instrument tool, in a six-monthperiod of time. (Appendix 5)The Brantford, County of Brant, Six Nations and New Credit tourism sector and downtown district of Brantford BR+Esurvey process involved eight months of work followed by the ongoing implementation efforts of some of the of thestrategic actions.