I spent some time in October in Salt Lake City at NADO’s Annual Training Conference talking with regional development organization leaders about how they’re managing the work. The same challenge came up in nearly every conversation. RDOs are coordinating more programs across more domains, but the systems they’re using to manage that work haven’t kept up.
Regional development organizations operate at the intersection of housing strategy, disaster recovery, workforce coordination, transportation planning, and economic development. For many, the complexity isn’t a new problem. What’s changed is the expectation that all these moving pieces can be tracked, coordinated, and demonstrated to boards and funders in real time.
What is the biggest challenge facing RDOs today?
Across conversations with RDO leaders, one challenge surfaced repeatedly. Housing programs tracked in Excel. Grant cycles managed through email threads. Resource directories published as PDFs that go stale within weeks. Revolving Loan Funds maintained in one database, transportation projects in another, workforce programs in a third.
These are barriers to the regional coordination these organizations exist to provide. When a member government asks what resources are available or how many businesses have been assisted this quarter, staff have to pull information from multiple places, clean it up, and hope it’s current.
Several directors told me they maintain resource lists in spreadsheets, maybe publish static PDFs to their websites, and rely on email to coordinate referrals between partners. Some use ArcGIS to map assets and transportation improvement programs, but they lack a shared internal system to organize all the data and make it accessible on both statewide association sites and individual COG sites.
The most common pain point centered on RDOs juggling housing, disaster recovery, workforce, aging services, transportation planning, grants, and Revolving Loan Funds across separate systems. That makes it hard to present one trusted hub to member governments and the public.
How is the scope of RDO work changing?
What surprised me most about the priorities RDO leaders are focused on right now was the reframing of housing as a core economic development lever, not a side issue. I heard interest in new domains like childcare capacity planning, energy planning, and employee ownership transitions. The expectations for what RDOs should coordinate are broadening, but the capacity to manage that expansion hasn’t followed.
This goes beyond adding programs. RDOs need the infrastructure to support those programs without adding unsustainable workload to lean teams. NADO’s conference agenda reflected this reality. Sessions explicitly addressed organizational capacity, including staffing, professional development, leadership succession, and grants management. These concerns are universal, not peripheral.
How do rural and metro-adjacent RDOs differ in their needs?
Rural RDOs need visibility with limited resources
Rural RDOs emphasized challenges around basic visibility, particularly around who does what across large geographies, limited staffing to keep data current, and the need for lightweight tools that work even when broadband or internal IT capacity is thin. These regions aren’t looking for sophisticated platforms that require dedicated staff to manage. They need infrastructure that reduces friction rather than adding to it.
Metro-adjacent RDOs focus on growth management
Metro-adjacent regions focused more on growth management, stakeholder coordination across multiple jurisdictions, and the need to demonstrate impact to increasingly data-focused boards. The scale is different, but the underlying need is similar—a way to centralize information so it can be accessed, shared, and used for decision-making.
Common challenges across all RDOs
Despite these differences, commonalities emerged everywhere:
- Pressure to demonstrate impact to boards and funders
- Staffing and capacity constraints
- The desire for a single source of truth that spans programs and partners
RDOs in every region are being asked to do more coordination with less time and fewer resources to manage the complexity.
What concerns do RDOs have about adopting new systems?
When I asked about concerns or hesitations around adopting new digital infrastructure, the responses were consistent. Ongoing data maintenance came up first. The fear of organizational change was close behind.
The first question was always about who would manage it. For teams already stretched across program delivery, grant writing, and board reporting, adding another system only works if it reduces friction elsewhere. If a new platform requires dedicated staff time just to keep it running, it’s not solving the problem.
The second hesitation was deeper and related to organizational change. Even when leaders recognized that current systems weren’t working, moving away from familiar processes felt risky. Leaders acknowledged that organizational change requires buy-in, training, and time that many teams don’t have in abundance.
What does effective regional coordination require?
When I asked what would make it easier for RDOs to coordinate across jurisdictional boundaries and partner organizations, the answers pointed toward shared infrastructure that works at both statewide and regional levels.
Several leaders referenced a model where statewide associations that coordinate multiple regional Councils of Governments (COGs) could provide centralized infrastructure. The practical enablers mentioned included:
- A shared data model for programs and resources on the statewide site
- Regional collections tailored to individual COG needs
- Role-based administration across COGs
- The ability to embed regional directories on COG sites
- A chatbot that could answer questions by pulling from statewide data
The Alabama model for statewide coordination
Alabama’s model came up more than once. In that structure, a statewide association coordinates all the regional COGs, and leaders expressed interest in adapting that approach to unify aging services, transportation data, housing programs, Revolving Loan Funds, and grant information into one searchable dashboard with regional collections. The result would be making that information embeddable and shareable across jurisdictions with automated refresh and basic analytics built in.
How do RDOs currently measure success?
RDOs are already tracking impact. Common metrics include:
- Businesses assisted
- Referrals completed
- Capital leveraged
- Revolving Loan Fund deal flow
- Grant wins
- Project milestones
The difficulty comes in consolidating that data in a way that tells a coherent story to boards, funders, and member governments.
When I talked about how EcoMap helps regions work more efficiently, the examples that resonated most were practical ones, like centralizing resources, programs, events, and job listings so staff and member governments have one searchable hub instead of scattered spreadsheets. That kind of infrastructure doesn’t just make work easier. It makes the impact of that work more visible.
What infrastructure gap needs to be addressed?
Based on what I heard, one gap in support or infrastructure stood out: the need for a statewide data commons that serves both the state association and regional COGs.
This would unify:
- Aging services
- Transportation and regional planning data
- Transit information
- Housing programs
- Revolving Loan Funds
- Grants
It would be searchable by staff, embeddable across regional jurisdictions, and automatically refreshed with basic analytics built in. The public-facing component would showcase resources, events, company sector data, and other information that supports economic development strategies.
That infrastructure already exists in parts. EcoMap Discover provides the public-facing hub, including sector-specific company data to support regional economic development strategies. What RDOs need now is the backend coordination layer that makes managing and sharing that information sustainable for lean teams.
The regions doing this work don’t need more programs. They need systems that make existing programs easier to coordinate, measure, and sustain.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a Regional Development Organization (RDO)?
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Regional Development Organizations are entities that coordinate economic and community development across multiple jurisdictions. They often serve as Councils of Governments (COGs) or regional planning organizations, managing programs in housing, workforce development, transportation, disaster recovery, and more.
- What is system sprawl in the context of RDOs?
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System sprawl refers to the challenge of managing multiple program areas across disconnected tools—Excel spreadsheets, email threads, static PDFs, and separate databases. This makes it difficult for RDOs to provide a unified view of resources and services to member governments and the public.
- What is the Alabama model for RDO coordination?
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The Alabama model features a statewide association that coordinates multiple regional Councils of Governments, providing centralized infrastructure while allowing for regional customization. This approach enables shared data models, embeddable directories, and consistent reporting across the state.
- How can RDOs demonstrate impact to funders and boards?
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RDOs can demonstrate impact by tracking metrics like businesses assisted, capital leveraged, referrals completed, and grant wins. The challenge is consolidating this data from multiple systems into coherent reports. Centralized digital infrastructure makes this measurement easier and more consistent.
- What is EcoMap Discover?
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EcoMap Discover is a public-facing platform that helps regions showcase organizations, companies, events, and funding opportunities. It provides searchable, continuously updated listings that can be embedded directly into economic development websites, reducing manual maintenance for lean teams.
