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Birmingham, Alabama's Office of Economic Development was the first city economic development department in the nation to be accredited through AEDC's Accredited Economic Development Organization (AEDO) program. The following article describes how they prepared themselves for the AEDO documentation and on-site review process.
INTRODUCTION
As economic developers head into the unknown, but almost certainly turbulent conditions of the 21st century, we need every competitive advantage we can get. One such advantage is the American Economic Development Council's Accredited Economic Development Organization (AEDO) program. AEDC markets their accreditation program as "a comprehensive peer review process that measures economic development organizations against commonly-held standards in the profession" and suggests that "earning the AEDO status tells your community and your prospects you have attained a measure of excellence that assures their trust is well placed and their business is in good hands." I am sure that is all true, as far as it goes. However, when I pursued AEDO accreditation for our organization, I did it for some very selfserving reasons which had a lot more to do with maintaining and improving our competitive edge as an organization than in achieving recognition for it.
As a former Regional Director of the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA), I had spent years trying to convince local economic development organizations of the benefits of the strategic planning approach to economic development. While I am not sure that I convinced many of them, I convinced myself!
That is why when I had an opportunity to come to Birmingham, Alabama in 1988 to completely reorganize the City's Office of Economic Development (OED), I jumped at the chance. Now, it is important to understand, as most of my public-sector colleagues do, that the Mother's Milk of economic development is political stability and adequate funding. I would be less than honest if I did not attribute much of our success in Birmingham to having lots of both!
We applied for the AEDO designation primarily because I felt that we already had almost all of the documentation that was required and that our programs would stand up to an objective review by other economic development practitioners. Secondarily, I realized that if we were successful in receiving the designation, there would be some public relations...