The recipients for the 2017 Hughes Investments Elevate Upstate Community Vibrancy Grants were announced during the Ten at the Top Celebrating Successes Brunch on November 16th. The two recipients, each receiving $5,000, are Main Street Laurens USA for their Food Truck Plaza project and the Greenwood Arts Center for their Bee smART project.

 

The grants, which began in 2013, annually provide "seed funds" to support vibrancy initiatives in communities across the Upstate region. There were 22 applications for the 2017 grants and five finalists gave brief presentations before the selections were made during the Celebrating Successes Brunch presented by Fluor on Thursday, November 16, at the Greenville Marriott as part of the Our Upstate Vision Forum Series presented by BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina.

 

"The goal of the Elevate Upstate program is to get communities thinking about what types of initiatives or programs might help spark vibrancy within their area and then provide some seed money to get some of them started," said Hughes Investments President Phil Hughes. "In the five years we have done this program, I have been amazed by the great ideas and passion of communities across the region to grow their vibrancy and sense of place. It was a real challenge to narrow the field to five finalists and to select the recipients."

 

In addition to providing $10,000 to the two winners, Hughes also pledged a $2,000 matching grant to each of the three other finalists. If they raise $2,000 towards completing their project, he will provide a matching $2,000 contribution. The other three finalists were the City of Landrum for their Art of the Horse project, the Abbeville County Farmers Market for their Farm to Fork Dinner and the City of Seneca and Blue Ridge Arts Council for their Art Wall at Monarch Park.

 

In the five years of the Hughes Investments Elevate Upstate Grants program, Phil Hughes and Hughes Investments has provided a total of $73,000 to help with 22 different vibrancy initiatives across the Upstate region.

In November the Small Business Support Providers Group met for a workshop to begin formulating a plan for nurturing the Upstate's entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The workshop kicked off with a presentation from Andy Stoll, Senior Program Officer for Ecosystem Development with the Kauffman Foundation. Andy outlined the components of a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem. If you would like to view Andy's presentation please click here.

 

Laura Corder, Managing Director of the Office of Innovation at the SC Department of Commerce, also presented during the meeting.

 

Much of the workshop was spent in group discussion, identifying hurdles and opportunities to nurture our region's entrepreneurial ecosystem. In future workshops participants will begin taking action to implement some of the identified opportunities.  

To view the list of hurdles and opportunities identified during the meeting please click here.