A project funded by the EOX State Center Grant Program

Using business data to make owner outreach far more precise

The Iowa Employee Ownership Center (IACEO) has delivered more than 50 presentations to over 2,000 people in recent years. That work has spread awareness, but IACEO wanted to know whether it could get more deliberate about which businesses it approaches next.

So it started with the data.

Using EOX project funding, IACEO purchased records for roughly 76,000 Iowa businesses and developed its own tools to narrow that universe to approximately 17,000 companies that fit its employee ownership criteria.

The project produced:

• Two interactive beta maps showing where likely EO candidates are concentrated across Iowa.
  
  
• A county-level view that quickly identifies areas with the greatest number of prospects.
  
  
• A second map that lets staff drill down to individual businesses and contact information.
  
  
• A custom application that filled in missing founding-date information for more than 20,000 business records using Iowa Secretary of State data.
  
  
• A clearer basis for deciding where IACEO should concentrate outreach, partnerships, and marketing resources.

Next, IACEO plans to work with the University of Northern Iowa’s Institute for Decision Making and economic developers across the state to pursue warm introductions in the areas the data identifies, alongside targeted digital outreach.

WHY THIS MATTERS

IACEO is asking a useful question: what changes when a State Center stops waiting for the next speaking invitation and starts identifying the businesses most likely to face an ownership transition?



The pilot should give Iowa a much clearer answer about where to spend limited outreach time. It will also give the broader Network something equally useful: evidence about whether this kind of business data and mapping is worth the investment, and a framework other Centers can examine if the results justify it.