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Partnership Virtual Investor Briefing: April 22, 2020

Partnership Virtual Investor Briefing

May 8, 2020

The Greater Des Moines Partnership held an Investor & Member Briefing on Wednesday, April 22. This virtual seminar was an opportunity to keep Partnership Investors up-to-date on new initiatives and learn how The Partnership is working toward its three key short-term strategies including: keeping businesses in business, keeping people working and keeping the community healthy and safe.

Updates on Key Short-Term Strategies

Keep Businesses in Business Strategy

The Partnership continues to promote the #DSMlocalchallenge in partnership with Catch Des Moines. The #DSMlocalchallenge continues to gain traction and has generated nearly 3,000 posts and 31.5M impressions to date. In addition to the challenge, as mentioned last week, The Partnership has launched the Leading in Times of Challenge podcast. There continues to be hundreds of people tuning in to this podcast series each week. This week, two new podcasts were released featuring Rowena Crosbie, Tero and Suku Radia, Bankers Trust.

Keep People Working Strategy

The Partnership continues to build out and add content related to the DSM Employment Ready initiative. Last week, we heard from Des Moines Public Schools and Mediacom, who are working to ensure all students have computers and access to the internet. This compelling story will be shared at a national level and we are partnering with Des Moines Public Schools and Mediacom on this PR effort to be shared next week. In addition, we continue to publish and promote new podcasts as a part of the DSM Employment Ready podcast.

Keep the Community Healthy + Safe Strategy

Keeping our community healthy is of utmost importance. We continue to help connect PPE donors with local hospitals and healthcare clinics. Last week we shared news that businesses, organizations and residents across DSM have created and/or donated more than 190,000 PPE items over the past few weeks. With all of the positive stories happening in Greater Des Moines (DSM), we have landed more than 100 media placements for The Partnership and our Investors.

In addition, we continue to promote and share the #DSMstrong initiative. There continues to be strong engagement with the hashtag, generating more than 3,700 posts and 25.9 million impressions. We released the first of many #DSMstrong videos, which generated more than 31,000 views.

The Partnership launched a new virtual event series, In for Lunch. This is a spin-off of the popular Out for Lunch series that takes place each summer in DSM. In for Lunch will take place each Thursday through May 14. During this virtual event, DSM residents can enjoy a bite to eat over the lunch hour – from the comfort of home while safely practice social distancing – while enjoying live tunes from local musicians. This event will be held from Noon – 1 p.m. every Thursday.

Special Guests

In addition to these updates, The Partnership hosted special guests including Dan Houston who spoke about private businesses supporting local small businesses in Greater Des Moines (DSM). David Stark and Karl Keeler also gave updates on our healthcare system. More information was shared from each of the Partnership’s areas of work.

Keeping the Community Informed

The Partnership team continues to update our COVID-19 Response Hub on a daily basis. We are producing about 25 blogs per week, what is typically accomplished in one month. Our average time on page for these blogs is about four minutes which surpasses the industry average of just over two minutes. In addition to blogs, we have hosted 19 informational webinars since April 1, with many more scheduled throughout the rest of the month and into May. Please visit the COVID-19 Response Hub to access these resources and more.

You can count on The Partnership to continue to share accurate and fact-based updates as time goes on. See more on COVID-19 here, including employment resources for those impacted due to COVID-19.

Find these tips useful? Find more business tools and information by visiting the Business Resources page.

Jay Byers

Jay Byers is the past President and CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Iowa Chamber Alliance, on the Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) Executive Board, Board of Directors and Community Growth Education Foundation, the General Council of the World Chambers Federation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Committee of 100.