CIEL - FAQ's
How was the BVI developed?
In 2001, Mike Stolte (CIEL Executive Director) asked the question, what makes some communities better than others for doing business in? Mike had seen how some communities were thriving while others were struggling despite being dealt, essentially, the same hand. Was there a way to compare one community with another, & use the comparison as a stimulus for making change? Were there things within a community’s control that could make it more business-friendly? From these initial questions, the BVI was created. Mike Stolte, CED Intern Anne Stacey, and staff at the Community Futures Development Corporation of Central Kootenay have continually developed the BVI over the past three years. The indicators were developed by synthesizing the findings of Canadian and international research with the experience of business and CED practitioners. The BVI process was designed to incorporate the best aspects of qualitative and quantitative research and to bring a community to action quickly. The BVI is constantly evolving and improving.
Can any community just purchase the BVI?
No. A community cannot just purchase the BVI. It is both a measurement and a community development process that requires the local sponsoring organization(s) to make a commitment to follow up on actions/priorities that the community selects. The CIEL Team screens communities to ensure that there is a good fit with communities & community sponsors.
What does it cost?
It depends on the size of the community. The administration of the BVI is billed upon the number of days it takes to facilitate, analyze results, create reports and conduct the process. CIEL is a not-for-profit organization. Monies go back into improving the BVI and to develop other programs to assist organizations or communities. In Canada, federal and provincial governments have supported communities undertaking the BVI. In addition, local development organizations, foundations, credit unions, colleges and the private sector have also assisted communities. CIEL works with collaboratively with communities to uncover and leverage funding for actions coming out of the BVI.
Do you collaborate with other organizations?
CIEL actively seeks out collaboration when our aims and methods are complementary to other, like-minded groups. We will collaborate on projects with educational institutions, individuals, the private sector, government, etc. Contact us for more information on collaboration possibilities.
I would like to read more about CIEL's projects and research, where can I get more information?
We have a promotion package for interested parties, complete with sample community assessment reports, success stories, recent media coverage, and other informative documents. Contact us to request a promotion package.
I am interested in learning more, do you teach classes or hold conferences?
Yes! We have a broad range of educational programs that we have taught in the past. We also tailor-make programs for groups, according to interests, backgrounds and time constraints. See the Tools & Services section for a sampling of the range of our program offerings.
Why is entrepreneurship important?
The 21st Century has been dubbed “The Entrepreneurial Century”. Up to 2 out of 3 jobs created in the US in the last decade were created by entrepreneurs. Some studies suggest that entrepreneurs and small business are creating 90-95% of new jobs. There is a powerful link between entrepreneurship & economic performance. Increasingly, research shows entrepreneurs fare better in supportive communities with dynamic business support organizations.
Why are perceptions important?
Take the question “is there enough loan capital for businesses in my community?” Traditionally, a statistical analysis would look at the number of financial institutions per capita and try to answer the above question. However, statistics often aren’t readily available, are out of date or do not properly measure reality. By measuring perceptions of business people, leaders and others in the community one can diagnose problems that traditional statistical analysis cannot. If survey participants report financial institutions are unwilling to take risk, one of two things may be happening. Lenders may not be taking the same amount of risk they do in other communities or, businesses may have an unrealistic expectation of the amount of risk lenders should take, as was the case in one community participating in the BVI. A bankers’ forum - a dialogue between lenders and businesses - helped to correct the misinformation and misperceptions in the community between lenders and businesses. This important impediment to business growth would have gone undiagnosed with a “statistics only” review. The BVI also looks to marry statistics with perceptions to paint a more complete and accurate picture of a community’s entrepreneurial capacity.
What are the challenges facing rural communities today?
Rural communities are part of a dynamic and changing marketplace today. Traditionally thought of as a vast, resource-based economy, rural life is undergoing a business metamorphosis. Recent research suggests that entrepreneurship is becoming an increasingly important part of the economic solution in North America, responsible for creating 60-80% of new jobs in the last decade. This represents a startling transformation, an entirely new conception of rural business practices. CIEL’s 2003 State of Entrepreneurship in Rural British Columbia report states that with four out of five new jobs likely to be created by small business, the fate of rural communities will increasingly be tied to stimulating entrepreneurs and creating an entrepreneurial environment within communities.
How did CIEL start?
Following the development of the BVI in 2001-2002, CIEL was created and incubated by two-time Conference Board of Canada award winner Community Futures Development Corporation of Central Kootenay (CFDCCK), a dynamic BC-based community and economic development organization. With increasing demand for its services outside the region, CIEL became an independent non-profit in Spring 2005 with its own Board of Directors and Advisory Board drawn from leaders in community, innovative and entrepreneurial organizations across Canada. CIEL receives no operating funding, relying completely on fee-for-service contracts for its revenues.
Why does CIEL work with such small sample sizes?
CIEL recognizes that a much larger community sampling – more than 380 randomly selected individuals in a community of 10,000 – is needed to ensure confidence in results 19 times out of 20 with a margin of error of + or – 5%. Recognizing that such sampling is beyond the means of most communities, the Check-up, the Community Vitality Initiative (CVI) and the Business Vitality Initiative (BVI) rely on a small, rich sampling to get a proxy measure.
Using those results, the community can best use its limited resources to delve deeper into areas of strength or weakness. The CHECK-UP, CVI, and BVI questionnaire processes are not meant to replace more comprehensive community surveying, and are certainly not intended to replace strategic planning.
Most processes that have set out to define and measure community progress or quality of life are statistical report-cards: they gather figures available from various government bodies, or they carry out surveys to develop their own statistics. They report numerically on a range of environmental, social and economic matters using statistical indicators. For example, the numbers of certain categories of crime can be measured and compared with previous years' numbers and with other communities. Examples of other indicators that can be statistically measured and compared might be air quality, house prices, or the number of teenage pregnancies
The CHECK-UP, the CVI and the BVI do not rely on statistics (although the CVI does collect some numbers about communities) but instead draw out residents' thoughts and feelings about their community. Perceptual indicators are gaining more currency in research as important underpinnings for motivation and action.
Perceptual indicators often paint a much richer picture than statistics do, or even a different picture altogether. We have found that citizens have difficulty engaging with statistics or being inspired by them.
Also, in difficult-to-measure areas such as sense of community or arts and culture, statistics are often somewhat contrived. To use two examples of questions sometimes used in such studies, what does number of visits to art galleries or number of library visits really tell us, and how do we find those numbers in a standardized enough form to compare them with other communities? Does the restaurant that hangs paintings by local artists qualify as a gallery? Does library use include childhood reading programs and attendance at author readings, or just books borrowed? Quality of life is dependent on many factors that are not reliably measurable with statistics.
Another problem with statistics is that many commonly-used measures are only available for cities or for large regions, not for the individual small rural communities in which CIEL specializes. For example, one commonly accepted health statistical indicator used to measure both public health and environmental health is numbers of childhood asthma cases. Generally, this number is unavailable for anything but cities and large health regions.
We do not mean to say that statistics have no value to communities. One possible result of any of our CIEL processes might be the community deciding to collect statistics in a targeted way about a specific issue, in order to learn more about how that issue is affecting them and how to deal with it.
For more information please contact the CIEL office.