Greater Dubuque Development Receives Award for Business Retention and Expansion Efforts

On March 18, 2021, the Professional Developers of Iowa recognized Greater Dubuque Development for their Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) effort with area College Outreach and Recruitment at the virtual Best of BRE in Iowa Awards. Greater Dubuque Development has a comprehensive BRE program, highlighting a 12-month College Outreach initiative with the purpose of connecting employers with a pipeline of skilled talent now and into the future. As a result of their efforts, this program has created thousands of student-employer interactions through job fairs, an intern engagement program, Employer Connection Guides and more.

The PDI Business Retention and Expansion (BRE) Awards Program recognizes the outstanding efforts of local and regional economic development initiatives in supporting growth and expansion of existing Iowa companies. Greater Dubuque Development Corporation was highlighted as a recipient of the 2020 Single Project and Overall BRE Program Award. This award recognizes a community or region that has implemented a successful BRE initiative for their area. Criteria used to select the recipients are: success of communicating the program, improvements to the business climate, and measurable results and outcomes. Consideration was also given to the number of annual visits, quality of the data collected, and how the data was used.