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Northside Planning Council Receives $75,000 in Grants for Business Incubator

Posted on by Brian Lee

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 28, 2011

Contact: Ellen Barnard

(608) 576-3734

Northside Planning Council Receives $75,000 in Grants for Business Incubator

Start-up money will help build FEED Community Kitchen on north side of Madison

(MADISON, Wis.) – Local food entrepreneurs are a step closer to having a facility to gain job skills and develop their products thanks to more than $75,000 in grants to the Northside Planning Council to construct the Food Enterprise & Economic Development Project (FEED) Community Kitchen & Food Business Incubator, FEED announced recently.

“These grants help us tremendously in our efforts to build our food business incubator,” Ellen Barnard, FEED project coordinator, said. “The benefit extends to the community, which will one day see more locally produced food as a result.”

The Madison Community Foundation’s $55,000 contribution will be used toward building the training and community kitchen, while Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin’s $20,500 grant will be used to purchase processing equipment. The grants follow a $295,400 long-term, deferred-payment loan from the City of Madison that only has to be paid back if the facility is sold, Barnard said.

Construction on the FEED Community Kitchen & Food Business Incubator will begin later this year at 1502 Pankratz Street near the Dane County Regional Airport.

Food Enterprise & Economic Development Project (FEED) Community Kitchen & Food Business Incubator is a 501(c)(3) non-profit social enterprise formed to support food entrepreneurs, provide custom processing of value-added products, enable development of food related employment and increase the availability of local, healthy and affordable food products in the Greater Madison community. For more information, please visit www.feedkitchens.org.

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Speaking tour

Posted on by Brian Lee

I’m sort of glad we had bad weather this past weekend, as I stayed inside for most of it to work on my presentations for this week. On Tuesday, I’ll be guest lecturing on social media for an Edgewood College MBA class. Then on Thursday, I’m the keynote speaker at the SMPS Wisconsin Awards Program, where I’ll explain “How to Pitch and Get Published.”

I also guest-lectured at Edgewood a year-and-a-half ago. It’s fascinating to see how much social media has evolved since then; as a result, I had to make significant updates to my previous presentation.

For the other presentation, it’s taking 10+ years of public relations experience and combining it with my previous teaching of the subject, then condensing it to 30 min.

It’s not a ‘public relations problem’

Posted on by Brian Lee

It’s a disservice to the public relations profession that the phrase “it’s a public relations problem” (or “it’s a public relations nightmare”) has entered our vocabulary as a way to describe a negative situation with an individual or a company.

When you have a leaky faucet, it’s not the plumber’s problem. When you have a rodent or insect infestation, it’s not the exterminator’s problem. In all these cases and more, it’s YOUR problem. The plumber, exterminator, etc. can help you out of your jam.

Public relations practitioners work with internal and external publics to help a person or company. Having those relationships are why we are called upon to “fix” problems, both private and public. This may mean reaching out to shareholders, the board of directors, regulatory commissions, customers, vendors and many more.

Crisis communications also fits under the PR umbrella. This area includes assessing and prioritizing potential threats, drafting Q&A, training spokespersons and developing a plan to contain and counteract the situation.

So next time something bad happens with a company or individual, remember that it’s their problem.