Featured Clients

Forward Sioux Falls is the proven and successful joint venture economic development partnership between the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce and the Sioux Falls Development Foundation. Since 1987 we have raised more than $37 million to enhance economic development efforts and improve the quality of life of the region.

The Sioux Falls area has changed tremendously since that first campaign – more jobs, expanding superior medical facilities, dozens of education opportunities and better shopping and cultural activities. Forward Sioux Falls can´t take all of the credit for our community´s successes. However, we have been instrumental in bringing the right people together and creating the right environment to allow for growth and progress in our region.

Specific components of the Forward Sioux Falls programs have changed over the years, but investors continue to favor program initiatives that are aggressive in attracting new business, increasing job growth and enhancing the overall quality of life.

In 2009, NCDS helped fund and launch the Joplin Regional Prosperity Initiative, a regional expansion of the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce’s economic development efforts.  Following the devastating tornado of May, 2011 Market Street Services created a new regional strategy, which led to the Accelerating Our Future campaign in 2014.  Public and private support from a region now covering seven counties across three states produced $4.5 million in funding for the new Joplin Regional Partnership, focused on improving the region’s competitive position through business retention & expansion; business attraction; and workforce development & talent recruitment.

The Competitive Edge program is a public private partnership of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, Wake County, and the City of Raleigh.  NCDS has managed five successful campaigns since the program’s inception in 1995.  During that time, it has helped create over 170,000 jobs, helped recruit the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes, and successfully advocated for the passage of four school bonds totaling $3 billion.  Recently, it has established a best practice talent attraction initiative called Work in the Triangle.

Built in 1914 for B.F. Keith’s Vaudeville circuit, the Lyric is one of few theatres still existing today that was specifically designed to maximize the acoustics and close seating needed for vaudeville shows. Major stars such as the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Sophie Tucker, Will Rogers and Milton Berle played the Lyric. Berle said it was “as fine a theatre as any in New York.”  In the summertime, air was fanned over two tons of ice a day to keep guests cool. Though seating was segregated, the Lyric was one of the first venues in the South where blacks and whites could watch the same show at the same time for the same price.The Lyric was once the finest performing arts theatre in Birmingham and through its restoration made possible by the Light up the Lyric fundraising camapign, it promises to be again.