State Offers Grants to Promote Tourism

New Mexico attracts more visitors every year, but the state wants to further boost tourism and related revenue by expanding on successful programs like New Mexico True and the Cooperative Marketing Program (CoOp).

New Mexico True is a brand that businesses, governments and nonprofit organizations can use by partnering with the New Mexico Tourism Department. That involves demonstrating how the organization expresses or evokes the state’s distinctive landscapes, cultures, food, art or history.

The CoOp program gives local nonprofits, municipalities and tribal governments a financial incentive to market what’s uniquely New Mexican about their event or location and even participate in existing advertising campaigns. Through the CoOp program, state money is leveraged with money from other public entities to amplify media buying power for all involved parties. (Private businesses can contribute up to 50 percent of a public entity’s total CoOp investment.) Continue reading

Innovation Vouchers help NM technology businesses thrive

Image of Teeniors. Article by Jason Gibbs.

Early-stage science and technology companies in New Mexico occasionally need a little boost, and the state’s Innovation Vouchers program, first launched in 2017, is there to lend a hand.

Managed by the New Mexico Economic Development Department’s (EDD) Office of Science and Technology, the program offers competitive grants of small amounts — $2,000 per individual per award — to help a company during critical moments of growth and development.  According to Jessica Mraz, communications and marketing coordinator for the EDD, Innovation Vouchers build on the state’s history of successful research and development and help to commercialize innovative technologies from the state’s research universities and federal laboratories. Continue reading

Two Programs Reimburse Employers for Training New and Veteran Workers

Sara Haring, Manager, JTIP

Sara Haring, Manager, JTIP

Job creation is on the minds of many as the economy continues its slow but steady climb from recession. In New Mexico, job creation has been on the agenda of the state Economic Development Department since 1972, when the New Mexico Job Training Incentive Program (JTIP) was launched to help businesses defray the cost of hiring and training new employees.

JTIP is one of the most generous training incentive packages in the country, funding classroom and on-the-job training for new jobs in businesses that are expanding in New Mexico or moving here. The department supplemented JTIP in 2005 with STEP-UP to help qualified companies train their existing workforce in new technologies or skills.

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