North Carolina | Pop. 434,748 | 4 counties

To begin community conversations, the council developed an online Story Map of data on racial disparities to better understand these challenges and how to address them. Learn more here.

North Carolina | Pop. 434,748 | 4 counties

With an eye on equity in workforce development, the council built partnerships with the Asheville Chamber Inclusive Hiring Partners program and re-entry and secondchance hiring program ARC INspire. LOSRC supports the Generation Plus team, which is working to reduce isolation, build social networks, and educate and advocate for the LGBTQ+ 55 and older population. Learn more here.

North Carolina | Pop. 2,288,454 | 9 counties

As shared in their 2023 CEDS, staff looked beyond just the cost of transportation to develop a transit equity portal that incorporated new metrics for vehicle accessibility, transit propensity, and persistent poverty. As part of the larger CONNECT Beyond Mobility Initiative, these metrics look at needs in the region’s urban and rural communities.

New Mexico | Pop. 1,068,376 | 5 counties

In their 2020 CEDS, the MRCOG team identifies key strategies for inclusive entrepreneurship across both rural and urban entrepreneurs. These strategies include identifying partners and metrics for developing programs by and for people of color, women, and other groups that have had special barriers to entry to entrepreneurship.

This guide from the National Skills Coalition outlines workforce and education policies that support tracking progress toward racial equity, including postsecondary training, correctional education, apprenticeships, sector partnerships, and upskilling strategies.

The Chicagoland Workforce Funder Alliance in Illinois serves as a model, with their efforts to fund and supports workforce partnerships in the manufacturing, health care, and early childhood sectors and grow apprenticeships in pandemic-impacted industries. The alliance has developed a workers’ rights for workforce development curriculum and leads the Raise the Floor Alliance to improve job quality and workplace standards for low-wage workers.

To inform survey design, this toolkit from OF/BY/FOR ALL provides insights to thoughtful collect demographic information.

Data equity has emerged as a best practice to understand how biased decisions and assumptions influence how data is collected, analyzed, interpreted, and communicated. This understanding explores the fallacies that data and research can be entirely objective and how choices in understanding data and metrics have crucial equity implications for communities. Learn more from We All Count.

To maximize the impact of the Action Plan and reduce inequities in the region, taking steps to address the root causes or systems that have created the disparities is required. Root causes are the underlying factors that cause systemic problems. By looking for root causes of problems and the multiple factors contributing to disparities, the EDD/EDO can more effectively design solutions that will solve the issue. Communities of color have faced a range of systems contributing to economic exclusion, from lender discrimination, lack of infrastructure investments, insufficient access to healthcare, and more. In crafting the action plan, ensure the cause of the problem is being addressed, rather than a symptom. Use a root cause analysis, with community stakeholders, to explore more impactful solutions. Facilitate root cause analysis discussions with resources from County Health Rankings.

A report from the Urban Land Institute explores ten economic, environmental, and social factors that contribute to resilience, including promoting equity, understanding vulnerabilities, and the cost of inaction.

From the International Association of Public Participation, frames community engagement across a spectrum of development stages that lead to true community ownership.

From the National League of Cities, a set of case studies, histories, and definitions to deepen city and community leaders’ efforts on acknowledging and supporting indigenous communities.

From Race Forward, this guide looks at how race inequities have served as a critical barrier in the workforce development field and provides models and solutions for making gains. This tool includes readiness assessment criteria to meet workforce development practitioners where they currently are.

From the Tableau Foundation, this equity-focused data community showcases disaggregated resources, maps, and data sources.

Code for America shares their qualitative research best practices in this guide, which includes considerations for ethics, interviews, and analyzing data.

This series of nine case studies, published by IEDC, identifies locally based economic recovery indicators, including social equity indicators.

Created with support from the Economic Development Administration, this playbook supports diverse founders and funders in understanding the breadth of resources, details of types of innovative models, and the best ways to support inclusive entrepreneurship.

Part of a larger series, this set of strategies from PolicyLink looks at how to advance racial equity in housing by implementing COVID-19 recovery strategies.

From the New Growth Innovation Network (NGIN), this guide provides definitions and resources for common concepts and topics within the inclusive economic development field.

Researchers at the Urban Institute share best practices and guiding questions to identify and build relationships with partners in service to community engagement.