Message from the General Manager

September 2009

It has been an interesting year at Community Futures Wood Buffalo. Firstly, I’d like to thank the Board for bringing me on as General Manager in June of 2008. It has been an exciting ride this fiscal year, showing great progress for the organization. In times of economic hardship, development agencies like ours are vital to our local economy by helping our businesses start off on the right footing.

With several years of up and down activity in this office, it was a hard task to determine the performance benchmarks for CFWB. But I think this past fiscal year showed what this team can really do when we are fully staffed and working full steam ahead. The stats look like this:

• We lent over one point seven million dollars, to over twenty-nine different clients.
• We created or maintained 177  jobs.
• We provided 63 in depth business consultations to lending clients.
• We served anther 109 walk in clients with a variety of needs, from business startups to marketing plans.
• We delivered twelve training sessions to over 71 participants.

Our clients came from a variety of backgrounds and key target sectors including aboriginal, youth, disabled and women. Serving these areas allowed our office’s presence in the community to grow and to become a vital resource.

This year I have taken a number of positive steps to ensure effective operational processes and procedures are in place. This allows CFWB to do our job in the most efficient manner possible. This process included a review of our portfolio, our policies, and of our operational guidelines. These steps have also been recognized by the Community Futures Network of Alberta and Western Economic Diversification as the right path to making CFWB one of the top performing offices in the province.

On a personal note, I would like to thank all the clients who have come to us this pasrt year for help. I like to say that Community Futures is the best ‘black book’ any business owner could have. If we don’t provide the service that you need to make your operations better, then we know who does provide it and will steer you in the right direction.

I’d also like to welcome our new staff members, Erin Griffin (Office Manager) and newly hired Business Analyst Lisa Downey. With this fresh talent in the organization, I’m sure that when I write my letter next year we will have a fresh slate of achievements to tell you about.

Ross Jacobs
General Manager