Nevada

During Fiscal Year 2013, EDA invested $2,737,000 in four projects in the State of Nevada. EDA’s investments help Nevada communities achieve bottom-up, locally-defined economic development goals and strategies.

EDA offers a complementary, balanced portfolio of grant programs designed to help rural and urban communities grow their private sectors and create jobs.

Investment Spotlight: Nevada Entrepreneur Success Tracker

Nevada is heavily reliant on the housing, construction, and leisure/hospitality sectors, which created a disproportionate impact during the economic downturn that began in 2007. Additionally, a study performed by the University of Nevada Center for Regional Studies showed that the region's lack of economic diversification not only impacts the current unemployment figures, but is making it especially hard for the state’s unemployed workers to find jobs at a pay rate above the national average.

In order to overcome this disadvantage, the state needed to promote more diversity in its economy. In 2013, EDA awarded $278,000 to the Nevada Institute for Renewable Energy Commercialization to develop the Nevada Entrepreneur Success Tracker (NEST), a technical assistance program to support entrepreneurial small business enterprises. The project will organize start-up business engagement events, provide a technical upgrade of an online educational and assessment tool, and develop a regional mentorship connection program.

Ultimately, NEST will develop greater capacity among entrepreneurial firms across the state. Enabling these firms to be more efficient will, in turn, lead to more employment opportunities for the region's workforce. The project work will place an emphasis upon entrepreneurial firms involved with commercialization of advanced technologies which would assist in diversification of the region's economy.