Our Work
Our current work focuses on Small Business Supports, Childcare Expansion, Governance and Capacity Building, Talent Development and Traded Sector Development. These high priority projects were chosen based on data, along with community and partner feedback, to provide the greatest immediate opportunities for impact and implementation.
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Read below to learn more.
The Goal: People of all races, ethnicities and genders wanting to start or are currently operating a small business in Stanislaus County should have the support they need to be successful.
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The Problem: Stanislaus County lags its peers in key indicators of business dynamism and entrepreneurship. Critical business supports are not available or at scale for the community. There is an opportunity to bolster the enabling environment to support small business development, increase & improve the quality of technical assistance offered to local entrepreneurs, and ensure business owners have access to essential capital to help them grow or scale.
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The Solutions We Are Working On: Creation of a comprehensive inventory of programs and services already in operation, identify duplication of or gaps in services, establishing a permanent workgroup to help build a small business ecosystem including bolstering mentorship opportunities, technical assistance, incubator and accelerator programs and access to capital.
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What Does Success Look Like? Stanislaus County has a growing number of small businesses and entrepreneurs due to robust business support, and those businesses are positively contributing to the economy and increasing the number of good jobs in our community.
The Goal: Families in Stanislaus County will have access to high quality childcare.
The Problem: In Stanislaus County, access to childcare is a serious barrier. In order to meet local workforce demand, we need 36,000 more childcare slots than we currently have (Pre-Covid), so we know that this number is higher now, with many child care centers closing operations during the pandemic and never reopening.
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The Solutions We Are Working On: We will need to advance multiple strategies to increase the supply of childcare slots across the County. Some viable options we are exploring include worker-owned childcare cooperatives, employers offering childcare on site, and expansion of in-home childcare businesses. A good child care system both creates and enables jobs by supporting good jobs for those working in child care, and enables parents to participate in work, education, job training, or other related activities.
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What Does Success Look Like? We will have enough high-quality childcare slots for families who need them.
The Goal: To deliver on the Stanislaus 2030 Investment Blueprint, the Stanislaus 2030 team will lead and drive economic and workforce initiatives identified in the Blueprint across various institutions and interests.
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The Problem: Based on experience in other regions executing comparable efforts, a team is needed to drive collective action and accountability among partners.
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The Solutions We Are Working On: Coordinate a portfolio of collaborative projects and initiatives outlined in the Investment Blueprint and connecting and filling gaps to advance a County-wide shared economic development agenda.
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What Does Success Look Like? Stanislaus 2030 will provide sustained leadership, facilitation and convening support to partners, ensure and monitor program delivery, secure public and private funding to scale innovative solutions, and become a centralized data and resource hub to track metrics, share best practices and inform policy.
The Goal: Stanislaus County will have a strong talent base, representative of our diverse population, that is equipped for good or promising jobs in manufacturing occupations.
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The Problem: There is a high percentage of students that graduate with degrees that do not lead to good jobs locally. Local training programs are designed for industries that do not lead to promising & good jobs. Local firms report that educational institutions are not responsive to industry demand in real time.
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The Solutions We Are Working On: Launching a Manufacturing Talent to Industry Exchange model, which is a process that gathers real-time information and uses it to inform strategies for growing the region’s talent pool, strengthening the talent pipeline, and aligning employer and educational stakeholder interests.
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What Does Success Look Like? We will have clearly articulated career pathways into manufacturing jobs, which will lead to more job placements in manufacturing occupations, and higher wages for participants in upskilling programs.
Image credit: UC Merced
The Goal: The region will be a top location in the country for bioindustrial manufacturing firms from scale-up to commercialization, creating new quality jobs for residents across all skill levels. To achieve that vision, public, private, and civic stakeholders will align and expand the region’s ecosystem of assets and supports required for firms and workers to succeed – diverse and abundant feedstocks, talent pipelines, infrastructure, as well as access to innovation and problem-solving expertise.
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The Problem: To address the region’s deficit in quality jobs that enable economic mobility, economic development efforts must prioritize diversifying its current industry base with higher-value traded sectors. Analysis of market, talent, innovation, and infrastructure factors identified bioindustrial manufacturing as a novel competitive niche for Stanislaus and the North San Joaquin Valley. This emerging sector holds potential to diversify the economy and generate good and promising jobs for residents, while building upon and complementing historic strengths in agriculture and food processing.
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The Solution: A new organization, BEAM Circular, was launched in January 2023 with a lead investment from Stanislaus County and incubation at Opportunity Stanislaus to advance this initiative. Together with local communities and a growing network of state and national collaborators, BEAM Circular is now aligning resources, policy, talent, and partnerships to make the North San Joaquin Valley the best place in the world for innovators in the circular bioeconomy to bring their solutions to scale. ​To learn more about BEAM Circular, click here.