The Resource Navigator – Now Even Smarter!

By Amy Kuhlers, Iowa Economic Development Administration – IASourcelink

Does Your Organization have a Niche?

Does your organization specialize in serving certain demographic clients or excel in a particular area of service?  If so, we can now better showcase those unique capabilities through the IASourceLink Resource Navigator!  While selecting special focus areas on your Resource Partner profile has always been available, newly enhanced search functionality places organizations with specialty areas at the top of the return list when that focus area is used as search criteria.

As an example, the Small Business Administration-sponsored Women’s Business Centers (WBC) are located across the country and are designed to assist women in starting and growing a business.  The Iowa Center for Economic Success serves as Iowa’s WBC and as such, they specialize in providing services to women located anywhere in Iowa.  This demographic has been indicated on their Resource Partner profile so when a search is performed in the Resource Navigator using the criteria of ‘Woman’, the Iowa Center shows up at the top of the search results before other organizations that also serve women, but not necessarily as a specialty audience.

We are working on contacting all Resource Partners for profile updates, but for those organizations who specialize in particular audiences or services, now is an especially great time to have your profile updated!  Contact me directly at [email protected] or at 515-725-3021 for more information.