The city of Maple Valley, The Maple Valley/Black Diamond Chamber of Commerce, and the Tahoma School District joined forces to develop and launch the Maple Valley PowerCard “Buy Local” campaign last November. The feedback so far has been positive and the continuing objective is to increase awareness and usage of the program throughout the community.

All the groups involved in the development of the program stepped forward with one intention: to help our community continue to thrive and to raise awareness of the goods and services available within our city and in the surrounding area. The launch of this program was only possible because of the commitment and dedication of a lot of individuals and organizations within the community.

Volunteers from the Maple Valley Economic Development Committee (EDC) hatched the buy local idea. But, before launching the campaign, a decision was made to make certain there was support from the business community. A survey of the storefront businesses in the area was conducted by EDC and chamber volunteers and the results were verified by students taking the AP statistics class at Tahoma High School as part of a class project. Results were overwhelmingly positive and the responses were used to guide the EDC as a program was formulated.

The city of Maple Valley’s budget supports economic development activities. With support from the city and the chamber the partners in the Buy Local program were able to put together a win-win program for all involved in record time—just in time for the holidays. Without the support of city and chamber staff this would not have been attainable. The Chamber also stepped up to purchase the domain name, host the website and provide staff to update and maintain the site going forward. And Amy Kuipers of Maple Valley Signs volunteered many hours of her time designing and coordinating the various printed materials and logos.

Launch of the program would have been difficult without the support of the Tahoma School District. Lori Cloud represented the district at the EDC meetings to help brainstorm the program. District staff along with almost 30 Tahoma High School student volunteers helped attach 18,000 MVPower cards to the flyers that were in the original distribution.

From its inception, a critical piece of this joint venture was that all businesses have the opportunity to participate in the program, whether chamber members or not— free of charge, and this is the case today.

Economic Development Committee members would like to thank everyone who participated in the development of the program. As we move ahead, we look forward to hearing more positive stories and our hope is that the MVPower Buy Local Campaign will continue to have a meaningful impact on our community.

If you are on Facebook, check out the Maple Valley Power Card Buy Local page for local deals. For business owners, please feel free to post your daily deal. Also, don’t forget to “Like” the page as the goal is to grow the online community to fuel the flow of information regarding the program. Everyone is also able to check local participating businesses on the program’s website, www.gomvpower.com.

Susan Harvey

Griffin Meyers

Jim Flynn

Sandi Sutton

MVPower Buy Local Campaign subcommittee

Heather Maggio, chair, Economic Development Committee

David W. Johnston, city manager