Midwest Partnership Economic Development serves Adair and Guthrie Counties in west central Iowa. Midwest Partnership works closely with its communities and partners to create jobs and grow the tax base in the two-county region. Recent structural changes to the organization led the Midwest Partnership Board to determine that the time was right to revisit strategic planning and develop a well-articulated, formalized plan to guide the work of the organization over the next three to five years.
Working with the Institute for Decision Making at the University of Northern Iowa, Midwest Partnership engaged its board members, as well as community stakeholders, to understand their priorities for economic development within the region and to develop a new Midwest Partnership Economic Development strategic plan. The planning process involved board and stakeholder input collected via a pre-planning questionnaire, in-person interviews and planning sessions with the board and/or staff to consider the input, determine and refine priorities, goals, objectives and action plans to be pursued by the organization over the coming years.