Inclusive Economic Development Planning – Creating Community Driven Investments through the Future of the Seattle Economy Framework

Services: Strategic Planning, Community Engagement, Research and Analytics, Meeting and Retreat Facilitation 

Focus Areas: Workforce Development, Project Management, Economic Development 

Staff: Theresa, Merilee, Andy, Julia, Tsewone, Marc 

In 2022, the City of Seattle Office of Economic Development (OED) partnered with Kinetic West to create a community-informed investment agenda for the City of Seattle to promote inclusive economic growth - especially for communities that have systemically been excluded from such opportunities. The City’s goal was to pull together common themes from existing thinking within community organizations to guide investments that could jumpstart economic growth in the wake of the pandemic. Knowing that this work has been done in part already by organizations across the city, Kinetic West worked to pull together those common themes from existing community reports.  

Over the course of six months, Kinetic West worked with OED to facilitate a robust stakeholder engagement process that included: 

  • Review of over a dozen existing Seattle-based economic development reports 

  • Feedback from 39 survey responses by community and economic development organizations  

  • Identification of 5 investment pillars with a combined 42 identified economic development priorities 

  • Workgroups for each of the 5 investment pillars and One Investment Alignment workgroup with over 80 individuals representing local economic development, community-based organizations, business, philanthropy and government departments 

This work culminated in a report titled the Future of the Seattle Economy. The Future of the Seattle Economy report will serve as a guiding document for OED and guide the City of Seattle in equitable investing. The identified five strategic pillars including:  

  1. Investing in Talent and Building our Workforce 

  2. Supporting Small Business and Women- and Minority-Owned Business Enterprises 

  3. Building Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) Community Wealth 

  4. Investing in Neighborhood Business Districts 

  5. Growing Businesses and Key Industries 

With a report developed, the next step was to create a plan from the community informed report. Kinetic West supported the creation, launch, and facilitation of workgroups focused on priority areas identified in the strategic framework of the Future of the Seattle Economy report. Through facilitating these workgroups Kinetic West helped OED further develop the community’s vision for the investment agenda. To get the workgroups running smoothly, we developed workgroup facilitation protocols, supported staffing and calendaring, worked with chairs to create agendas, took notes to track outcomes, and provided overall project management support. From this information, Kinetic West condensed their findings into concrete investment recommendations made to OED, and supported OED in releasing the final recommendations to the public. 

Through supportive project management and high-quality quantitative and qualitative data collection through surveys, interviews and workgroup facilitation, Kinetic West is proud to support OED in increasing equitable economic investment in our city and uplifting the voices and planning priorities of communities. This framework was passed and approved through city resolution to guide Jump Start fund spending. To learn more about the project see OED’s blog post and presentation to the Economic Development, Technology & City Light Committee, video here. We believe this model of inclusive planning can be used outside of Economic Development in any setting where a client needs to build a plan/strategy with a number of stakeholders have already been active in the space.

To start the conversation about what your inclusive planning work could be like, please email Theresa.kouo@kineticwest.com. 

Marc Casale