A public four-year college recently engaged Impact DataSource to estimate its impact. The college provided budget expenditure data including operating expenditures and payroll totals, as well as information on the student body, events hosted or held at the college, and visitors.
Impact DataSource estimated the impact resulting from the following key activities at the school to isolate the contribution to the total from each:
- University Operations
- Student Spending
- Visitor Spending
Impact DataSource collected data from the college, prepared a draft of the analysis, and then held several conference calls and online meetings to discuss the results with college officials. The university’s spending supported the lion’s share of the impacts in this analysis; however, student spending and visitor spending had significant contributions to the local economy as well. Although the college is a public university and exempt from some local taxes, such as property taxes, the activity supported by the college resulted in substantial revenues for the county and city. Ultimately, the college was able to distill our detailed report into a few key points that it could use to articulate its value to the local community.
This post is part of a series on the many uses of an economic impact study. These stories represent just a few of our clients and illustrate how they have used our analyses to communicate the value of businesses and/or other organizations in their community. Here’s the full list:
- State-level Economic Development Incentive Program – California Competes Tax Credit
- Local ED Incentive Negotiations
- Economic Development Organization (EDO) Performance Report
- A Manufacturer Faced with Possible New Water Restrictions
- Public Four-Year College Impact Analysis
- Publicly Funded Business Incubator
