For example, minority entrepreneurs who have reached critical points in the development of their businesses and desperately need the Institute's consulting services increasingly are finding their way to our door. We have strong partners who are helping create a seamless web of services. In our building alone, talented professionals from our staff as well as the North Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations, the North Carolina Community Development Initiative, North Carolina Minority Support Center, and the Legislative Black Caucus interact daily, refining their individual areas of expertness, planning joint projects and benefiting from each other's ideas and specialized resources. People are amazed by the high degree of cooperation in North Carolina. The General Assembly provides vital funding.
Foundations help launch and support programs.
Colleges and universities participate in dozens of ways. Corporations provide grants, make their top executives available as resources, donate office space and furnishings, and forge economic development partnerships. We at the Institute conduct in-depth research, provide consulting services to selected emerging businesses, provide training in management and other skills, do matchmaking between minority suppliers and companies which need their services, and much more. Our vision must be broad. We must reinvest in both our inner cities and the vast rural areas of North Carolina and embrace strategies which create sustainable economic development.