As soon as a community becomes designated, the local Main Street program is required to begin reporting economic impact in the district. This includes volunteer hours, new businesses that open/close in the district, job creation/jobs lost, private investment, and public improvements. The numbers shown reflect for every $1 spent by the public sector in a downtown or neighborhood commercial district, there's $6.85 of private investment. Besides the obvious impact those numbers demonstrate, these statistics help Main Street directors tell a story.

Securing or raising funds Main Street depends on a variety of funding sources from both the public and private sectors, so demonstrating that Main Street is making an economic impact gives validity to investing in the program.

Evaluating a program  Numbers tell a lot more than just economic impact.  Maestro, the CRM platform that Main Street Alabama provides for Designated programs, allows directors to run reports that compare reported statistics over time. For example, if a director notices a decline of volunteer hours reported, it might indicate that there needs to be more emphasis on volunteer development moving forward.

 

Recruitment tool Developers want their ventures to be successful, so often they choose to invest in successful communities. By updating and publicizing economic impact numbers on social media, website, as well as in collateral such as a business investment guides will help Main Street attract investors.  

 

Telling the program’s story Many Main Street programs use economic impact statistics when telling the story of its district. By using in a boilerplate on press releases and annual reports, the message is clear that Main Street is a valuable economic development engine for the community. And, by reporting and tracking over time, it can indeed make a powerful story to share.

Main Street programs improve their communities in many ways, from supporting new business ventures, to creating people-friendly public spaces, to preserving and repurposing historic structures, and so much more. While not all Main Street's work is easily measurable, it is critical that we identify ways to tell a more complete story about the difference Main Street makes, and that we have the data to back it up.