Case Study: Alliance Development
“Quorum helped us look beyond the short-term legislative issues to develop a more long-term, strategic approach to promoting economic development and access to capital in Texas and others of our key markets. As a result, we’ve been able to better communicate the power of small business financing in a regional and state economy.”
Alliance Development
The Client
The Texas Coalition for Capital is a broad-based coalition of leaders supporting economic development and job creation through long-term access to capital for Texas entrepreneurs and small businesses. The Texas Coalition for Capital (TxCAP) works closely with a broad range of existing business, economic development, civic, citizen, and academic organizations and state leaders to promote a variety that stimulates growth in the Texas economy and job creation.
The Environment
Late in the 2003 Texas legislative session, Quorum was hired by a coalition of venture capital firms to advocate for legislation in support of economic development. Quorum deployed a team of professionals in place to gain political intelligence on the issue and advocate for the legislation. In the process, Quorum identified the opportunity to take a more long-term view of the need for capital access and to align its clients with other influencers to take an ongoing, strategic role.
The Strategy
To emphasize the broad-based support for economic development legislation, Quorum spearheaded the formation of the Texas Coalition for Capital. Launched in 2004, the coalition’s managing director, Quorum’s Craig Casselberry, assembled an impressive board of directors including Tom Kowalski, coalition chairman and president of the Texas Healthcare and Bioscience Institute; Pike Powers, partner, Fulbright & Jaworski, LLP; Dr. Randall Goldsmith of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Clare Emerson, Executive Director of AeA; Dan Matheson, former Chair of the Texas State University Board of Regents, and Larry Peterson, former chair of Texas Lyceum, among others..
The Coalition’s Advisory Board includes representation from most of the state’s major universities and directors of Texas’ Regional Centers for Innovation and Commercialization (RCICs), which are the regional agents for the Texas Emerging Technology Fund Committee.
The Coalition works closely with a broad range of existing business, economic development, civic, citizen, and academic organizations and state leaders to promote a variety of programs and policies that stimulate job creation and growth in the Texas economy.
The Results
The legislation initially promoted by Texas Coalition for Capital was passed successfully and funded. This legislation will provide hundreds of millions of dollars in start-up financing for Texas small businesses. The Coalition for Capital has since emerged as a leading economic development organization, having established a governing Board and Advisory Board second to none in the state, engaged third-party stakeholder organizations in the effort, and initiated a full range of programming centered on connecting Texas companies with Texas capital. The coalition continues to be active and engaged statewide, and its ability to promote job growth and economic development in Texas is widely respected among state legislators and regulators.
More recently, the Coalition was recruited by the Office of the Governor to manage the Texas Capital Forum, a major event designed to showcase the full scope of Texas’ economic development and capital programs and policies.