October 21, 2013
Promoting Northumberland as a community that welcomes innovative tech startups has drawn attention to the Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation. The Northumberland CFDC was honoured recently when it won the Award of Excellence for Innovative Collaborations. Investment in the tech sector is seen as a great opportunity for economic development, and Northumberland CFDC’s initiative to expand the local startup ecosystem impressed the judging committee.
Northumberland CFDC was selected for the prestigious award out of nominations from across the province, and received the recognition at the annual conference of the Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations (OACFDC), held recently in Sarnia. Accepting the award on behalf of the Northumberland CFDC was Executive Director Wendy Curtis, Susan Latta, Business Manager, and John Hayden, Manager of Enterprise Programs.
The Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation is one of 61 CFDCs across Ontario. Nearly 250 delegates from CFDCs met in Sarnia recently to share their successes in the awards ceremony. Northumberland CFDC took one of four awards presented at the conference, which featured a keynote address by the Minister of State responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario) the Honourable Gary Goodyear.
“We wanted to bring attention to Northumberland as a viable place for young scientists and engineers to launch their businesses,” says Ms. Curtis. To do this, Northumberland CFDC launched two new initiatives in collaboration with FedDev Ontario, Spark Centre and IDEAHUB. Scientists and Engineers in Business (SEB) provides matching, performance-based grants to graduates of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs at Ontario Colleges and Universities and N100 is an annual entrepreneurship competition launched in 2013, which offers the winner a crucial $100,000 early-stage private equity investment. Both programs are accelerating startups—taking companies at the idea-stage and transforming them into investment-ready opportunities.
The programs are huge successes with 24 new startups launched since 2012, including: IFTech, Gift-it, Doktri, Skopworks, Kai Innovations and They Innovate.
Working with the Municipality of Port Hope, many of Northumberland’s startups are housed at the IDEAHUB business incubator. “We provide financing and key strategy development services and IDEAHUB is the location piece,” Ms. Curtis explains. “The entrepreneurs get intensive coaching and mentoring along the way,” she adds.
A key partner in this wrap-around strategy is Spark Centre, a Regional Innovation Centre committed to assisting high-growth potential entrepreneurs in Northumberland (as well as Durham). Ms. Curtis believes in the importance of working together with partners to provide comprehensive acceleration services to startups, including: resources on intellectual property, regulatory and technical information, legal, insurance and corporate advisory services and information on funding opportunities.
Providing opportunities for young entrepreneurs in Northumberland—a metro-adjacent small-town region just East of Toronto—is a crucial outcome of the CFDC’s tech startup acceleration initiative. “We’re actually presenting Northumberland as a startup hotspot, which is a new way of looking at youth attraction and retention,” Ms. Curtis says. “And our startups are in turn creating local jobs ideal for young graduates: web developers, customer support specialists, R&D and marketing and communications. These next generation entrepreneurs bring new technologies to market, such as ubiquitous computers, virtual reality suits, clipless smartphone holsters, e-health apps and more.”
“We are pleased to honour Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation and their partners for their work in innovative collaborations,” says Diana Jedig, Executive Director of the Ontario Association of Community Futures Development Corporations. “It is exciting to see these technologies coming into everyday use.”
Community Futures Development Corporations (CFDCs) offer business counselling (a free service), financing for small and medium-sized enterprises for start-up and expansion, strategic planning support for local projects, and community economic development in rural areas across Canada. Each CFDC is locally managed by a volunteer Board of Directors, and funded with the support of the Government of Canada’s Economic Action Plan through FedNor and FedDev Ontario. To learn more about Community Futures Program in Ontario or the OACFDC, go to www.oacfdc.com
Photo: Accepting the Award of Excellence for Innovative Collaboration was Wendy Curtis and John Hayden (centre) of Northumberland CFDC. Also on hand, were Sponsor Sharon Wilson, Benefits Consultant; Carmen DeMarco, FedNor; Wendy Curtis, John Hayden, Susan Latta, Northumberland CFDC; and Mark Wilson of FedDev Ontario.
For information about the Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation, contact:
Wendy Curtis, Executive Director
Northumberland Community Futures Development Corporation
600 William Street, Suite 600
Cobourg, Ontario K9A 3A5
Phone: 905-372-8315 Ext. 227 / Toll free: 1-866-670-1191
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
