Rotary Club of Casper WY
Meeting Summary
09/21/2020
President Lisa Scroggins called the meeting to order promptly at 12:15, with the ring of the bell and welcomed everyone to today’s meeting.
Inspiration, Pledge, 4-Way Test:
Dusty Johnson
Greeters:
Jim and Ann Ruble were our greeters today and Jim introduced the members who brought guests:
- Vickery Hall introduced Mike Morrissey (Rocky Mountain Power);
- Ann Ruble introduced her mom Dolores Schiffman;
Family of Rotary:
Ann Ruble asked that we all pray for everyone on the front range where the fires are encroaching on homes.
Lisa Scroggins let us know that Mike Ward is fighting cancer and would love to hear from his fellow Rotarians, he is scheduled for a PET scan early October to find out what his Doctors plan going forward but they are optimistic. Please pray for Mike.
Rotarians of the Week:
President Lisa Scroggins nominated Mark Owens for all of his help with the technology and the Zoom meeting. She also asked that if there are 3 to 4 others who could help please let her know.
President Lisa also nominated Mike McIntosh for transcribing these meeting recaps, also Kendra Ziler, for doing the Rotary Rig, and Jim Porter for being the Club Historian and tracking all of these things.
Announcements:
Miamie Sleep announced that there is information on the tables about needs for next year’s Duck Derby. Let her know if you have questions or are interested in helping out. She needs to fill the spot for someone to find sponsorships ASAP.
Glenn Januska announced that there is registration information and sponsorship information for the fun run on October 3rd. Please sign up and let them know if you can help out. There will be a multi-club social afterwards and more information to follow.
President Lisa let us know that there are some more crosses available so if you would like one please email her.
President Lisa announced that Barry Johnson will be moving to Hill City SD so he resigned his position on the board. If you are interested in being on the board let her know. His avenue of service is the Rotary International Foundation.
Dusty Johnson announced that Thursday October 8th will be the food packing for Nicaragua, it will be a little different with health department regulations. He will get more information out to the club.
Membership:
Gena Jensen, sponsored by Bill Mortimer, was inducted into the club today. Congratulations and Welcome!
Program (Advance Casper):
President Elect Lori Klatt introduced our speakers today, Morryah McCurdy (VP of Business Development), and Justin Farley (CEO) with Advance Wyoming. Justin started us off by telling us that his life has been touched by Rotary starting with RYLA when he was younger. The Wyoming Invest Now is a SOS platform developed some time ago that allows for credited and noncredited investors to invest in WY businesses. There are three companies across WY that are using this platform. Advance WY purchased Invest 307 to work in conjunction with Invest Now, as the marketplace to raise capital. Credited Investors are high net worth and non-credited are the rest of us. The minimum investment is set by the company but with non-credited there is a maximum to make sure that their money is not lost due to the risk of the investment. You can do debt investment or an equity investment, however you want to structure it, if agreeable to the company. This can also be used for community development as well for things like the David Street Station.
Breakthrough 307 is the angel investment group here in Casper, the first round of funding has been fully deployed. It was 20 investors at $100,000 each. They are now working on the second round of funding at $100,000 with 30 plus investors. Advance Casper is participating and assisting in the administration of that fund.
Another fund is two energy partners with residency in Casper, set up to take advantage of our Opportunity Zones with a goal of $100 Million venture capital fund based around bio-sciences. They have been recruiting businesses to take advantage of this opportunity by relocating here to Casper. They have done some site tours with CEOs who are interested in pursuing this opportunity. The goal is to roll this out in November.
They also have reciprocal agreements with surrounding States that they can use to leverage the funds into larger amounts for the right opportunity. They are focused on maintaining Casper as the hub for business expansion for Wyoming. They have the ability now to keep Wyoming companies in Wyoming and to bring in more companies.
They have received a grant, first Wyoming community to receive this innovation grant, which they are going to use to create the position of a Capital Manager at Advance Casper that will help market and manage all of these funds as companies come in.
Morryah then took over speaking, she started by thanking the delegations and congresswoman Cheney, which have helped pull in major companies, like Boeing and BAE Systems to help us learn to take advantage of opportunities to grow Wyoming’s economy. Advance Casper is focusing on diversifying Wyoming in order to keep our economy stable. They plan on having a conference again next year to pull in more of these speakers to help grow the Wyoming economy. They are planning a Tech and Bio-Medical Summit in 2021 to focus on the venture capital to showcase Casper as a strong place for a Tech and Bio-medical Hub. This will help bring in those types of businesses and keep them here to support our Wyoming economy.
Choose Casper is their grassroots effort to recruit qualified people into our workforce. It is live at choosecpr.com, it is a collaboration between a handful of community partners who have seen that Casper’s digital footprint is lacking. They wanted to put all of our information together so that people can see all of the good things in one place. They have started with Casper Ambassadors who give people an insight into what we as a community have to offer. She asked that we go in and do reviews on Casper in order to bring up our grade so that the positive things show up first in any Google search.
They showed us the board members and thanked them for having the vision and working so hard. They encourage all business members to join Advance Casper so that you have a voice in the future of Casper and the whole State.
They opened it up for questions, first was what is the biggest challenge of recruiting companies to come to Casper. They said there are a lot of challenges, starting with our digital identity being all over the board, thus the cleaning up of that narrative and connecting them with community members who can attest to the greatness of Casper. There is also a misconception that we still ride horses to work, so they are trying to paint the picture of Wyoming and Casper how it actually is. Also, the labor force is an issue so we will need to recruit and or train the labor force. Our livability and access that we have will go a long way to recruit people if we get the word out. The ages 18-35 people are now leaving Wyoming and then returning later to raise their kids here so we want to focus on jobs for them here so they can stay here or return sooner.
They have a great relationship with Casper College to help with the diversification of our economy and our workforce. Dr. Divine is on their board and so they work well together.
They have been attempting to diversify our economy for a long time but what happens is, energy picks up so the companies focus on getting the quick easy money instead of attempting to diversify. Right now, we are in an emergency situation where we have no choice but to diversify.
They have also spoken with UW to develop degrees to help with incoming companies having a qualified workforce.
They are trying to increase our Aerospace and Defense income with our ability to build things with our manufacturing workforce that we have right here.
President Lisa Scroggins concluded the meeting at 1:09, she let us know that next week, we will be back at the Ramkota. PE Lori Klatt said that our program will be Lucas Dow and Rob Hill from Pathways Innovation Center speaking about creating a skilled workforce.
“Rotary Opens Opportunities”
