Connecting you with your city, one check-in at a time

Introduction
North Dakota State University:
Thank you for contacting City Connect, we are moved by your concern for your community. We
too feel that the disconnection between millennials and the Fargo/Moorhead community is an
issue that should be addressed sooner rather than later. With the help of our app, City Connect,
we can help to ensure that young professionals are integrated into the community and that they
feel accepted. Because City Connect aims to accomplish these things, our app is designed to
increase the number of young professionals choosing to stay in the Fargo/Moorhead area. Being
both fun and rewarding, our app has been successfully proven to get people connected and active
in their communities and discover all that it may have to offer.
Our main objective is to provide insight into North Dakota State Universitys desires for keeping
young professionals in the Fargo/Moorhead community. City Connect has worked with several
other communities throughout the United States and we would love to work with you as well.
When working within a community, we are able to gather the knowledge needed to figure out
what interests different people and what makes this community one they would want to build a
professional future in. After analyzing research from across the country, we have found that
communities generally encompassed the very things that people described they were looking for,
the citizens just werent aware of it.
With the constant influx and range in cultural diversity, it can be very difficult for a smaller
community to provide the means to make all of its occupants feel accepted or that they are
making even the smallest of contributions. Creating events or groups tailored to include those
that may share similar goals, motives, passions, or ideas can be a challenge in itself. Yet, as you
may already know, spreading awareness, gathering members, and continuing to gain new
members while retaining old ones, can prove to be just as hard.
With our app, we can help to get more people out and active within their communities. City
Connect is accessible to anyone, at any time, and anywhere, in North America. It is designed to
allow its users to check-in by verifying their location through the app and then providing
proper documentation that each location has, in fact, been visited and some type of
service/exchange occurred. For example, if someone were to check-in at the local Spicy Pie, a
photo of a receipt may be a sufficient form of verification. As we encourage creativity, we accept
various of acceptable documentation, as long as there is enough to prove a transaction or visit
was made. By having numerous locations accessible within the app, users are encouraged to visit
local restaurants, stores, shops, businesses, parks, recreational locations, and much, much more.
Once users check-in to a location and provide proof of their visit, they will earn points. The City

Connect app is based off of a cumulative point system, having certain rewards for various levels
of point accumulations.
City Connect will not only be a possible way for students to get great scholarships, but it is a way
to get them more involved with the community and truly realize what is going on around them
that they are missing out on. Students get the benefit of enjoying their experiences more and
businesses benefit from increased exposure and revenue generated by the application. Getting
students out into the community helps them develop roots which increases the likelihood of them
staying in the community after they graduate. The Fargo/Moorhead community has done an
incredible job of drawing young professionals into the area; let us help you keep them here.
We have had wonderful success with City Connect thus far, and it has been implemented in a
number of other communities. Some of our most impactful launches have occurred in Maple
Grove, Minnesota, Bismarck, North Dakota, Baltimore, Maryland and Alexandria, Minnesota.
Our previous experiences have taught us that when students and local citizens were motivated to
branch out into their communities, a positive correlation was seen with the long-term growth of
the area. Although City Connect serves the same purpose for every community we work with, we
will need to design a separate regional version that will be tailored to all of your needs. We will
do this by knowing the the FM area well enough to know what will be attractive to young
professionals in order to make them download the app and participate in City Connect.
In order to fit City Connect to your needs we need to properly address the issue, so we will start
by reviewing our understanding of your current situation. To best be able to serve your
community, we need to make sure we know all of the facts. We will continue by discussing our
proposed plan and go over our individual qualifications so you can be assured that we are fully
capable of committing to everything that we are offering. Before we wrap up, we will go over the
proposed benefits and highlight all of the ways that we believe this project will benefit your
community.
Current Situation
There are many problems that come about to a city when people are only there for a short period
of time, ie: young professionals. What we are seeing is that the average age in the
Fargo/Moorhead area is just above 30, according to Smart Move (Smart Move 2010). Kevin
Iverson, manager of the U.S. Census office with the North Dakota Department of Commerce,
says in Easters Article that The number of 20 to 34 year olds has increased around the state
from about 150,000 to nearly 179,000 between 2010 and 2014an increase of about 17.1
percent. In Grand Forks County, that change was 11.9 percent; in Cass County, it was 11.2
percent; in Burleigh County it was 11.5 percent (Easter 2016). This ratio of new millennials

compared to citizens over 40 years old staying is too high, which leads to experienced people
leaving the workforce.
From our surveys that we distributed, and by simply talking with our peers throughout the last
couple years, we have gathered that Fargo/Moorhead is a great area for starting our lives after
college because of the amount of jobs available for right after graduation. However, it seems that
after these young professionals get their foot in the door, they realize that they want to go back to
where they are from or explore opportunities elsewhere.
City Connect released a survey to the Fargo/Moorhead area to collect and analyze the responses
and opinions of young professionals within the area. After looking over the collected data, we
found that many people described their ideal community to give them a sense of belonging and
to make them feel like they are contributing. We found that there are many things people both
love and dislike about the Fargo/Moorhead communities such as theres nothing to do in Fargo
besides drink, Its too cold and I dont have any ties to the community, like I do back home.
While the weather is unable to be changed, the other issues can be. With the help of City
Connect, we truly believe we can work to get more millennials active and involved within the
community.
Project Plan
Based on our understanding of your current situation, we think that our mobile application would
be a great step in the right direction. Our app, City Connect, encourages people, particularly
students, to get out into the community by offering points for completing certain objectives.
These objectives will be based off of the response of the Fargo/Moorhead businesses and who is
looking to be a part of this adventure. Our prior experiences have seen an overwhelming amount
of interest from local organizations who understand that City Connect is a great way to draw in
customers and increase revenue. Businesses stand to gain lifelong customers and are often eager
to get involved.
To find these eager businesses, we will spend up to twelve months living in your community and
reaching out to different organizations. During this time, we set up general presentations,
generally at City Hall and other well-known public places, and we also spend a lot of time
meeting with companies in a face-to-face setting. Once we start planting a few seeds, we have
found that businesses start to seek us out, showing that word of mouth is one of our best forms of
advertisements. This allows us to set up even more meetings and helps expand the potential
market for your students.

When meeting with businesses, we discuss their highlights and figure out the best way to draw
people into their store and base the objective off of that. For example, Spicy Pie is a great place
for students to grab a quick bite for lunch, so students can earn points by checking in, buying a
slice, and uploading their receipt. Different objectives work better for different companies, and
working with businesses to develop them helps us understand the community and provide the
best experience for students.
After the interest and objective with a company is developed, we work with them to determine
their pricing, and in turn, their respective point value. For every $100 donated, a company can
offer 1 point for their check in. Because year-end prizes are given based off of point totals,
businesses are encouraged to donate more money in order to increase the amount of points a
student can receive by checking in to their location. The money received from the initial
donations is used towards tailoring City Connect for your specific needs, and the leftover funds
are put into the prize pool for the year-end rewards. To keep the prize pool funded, we follow up
with these companies and re-evaluate their donation every year, allowing them to adjust their
point values if they desire. New donations must be placed every year for the company to remain
as a participant with our application.
The continual donations help companies meet their needs, and are a great way to continue
funding the program so that prizes can be given out every year. Every region produces a different
amount of interest which naturally provides us with a different amount of funds from each
community. Actual values can vary, but on average we have a start-up prize pool of $20,000.
Based off of this value, we propose the following prize table:

$7,500 scholarship for First Place

$5,000 scholarship for Second Place
$2,500 scholarship for Third Place
Ten $500 scholarships given away at random to any participant over a predetermined baseline of
points.
This prize table can be adjusted to best suit your needs. We also propose giving a lump sum of
cash option as well. We understand that not everyone is motivated by the idea of a college
scholarship, and we dont want to discourage participation. Because of this, we recommend
offering the scholarship at full value, or a cash option valued at 50% of the scholarship for each
award. The school wins when students select the scholarship option by receiving the funds the
next semester, but they also win when participants select the cash option, because the 50% not
given away in cash is immediately put back into the prize pool for the following year which can
cause a spike in participant interest.

Before suggesting that you use our application, we needed to make sure that the Fargo/Moorhead
area is a good fit for City Connect. To do that, we spent a week reaching out to businesses near
your campus to gauge interest. Contracts wont be signed until you agree to move forward, but
we have promissory notes signed by multiple companies if you choose to work with us. Their
offered donations, as well as proposed task objectives, can are listed in the table below:
Company

Donation

Objective

Point Value

Scheels

$10,000

Spend over $500 on a single purchase

100

M.J. Capellis

$7,500

Have any three services performed in a single

month

75

Gate City Bank

$5000

Open a new Checking/Savings Account

50

Buffalo Wild
Wings

$2500

Buy over 50 wings on any Wing

Tuesday/Thursday

25

Fargo Air
Museum

$1000

Purchase any
Adult/Student/Military/Veteran/Senior
Admission

10

Herd & Horns

Bar and Grill

$1000

Purchase a Herd & Horns Mug

10

Spicy Pie

$500

Order pizza by the slice

Jimmy Johns

$500

Make it a combo by adding

pickle/chips/cookie and a drink

If you choose to work with us, we will continue working in your community and we will be able
to watch this table grow at an astonishing rate.
Qualifications
We wouldnt recommend using City Connect if we didnt think it would work for you. Our
company was founded amongst four college graduates and has been growing and improving ever
since. We are an online company which allows us to move around the country working with our
clients and truly getting a feel for the communities that we work in. Before we discuss the
success of our past projects, we would like to give you some insight into our team members and
what they bring to the table.

 Adam Sekelsky, App Designer

Adam is originally from Illinois, but has been living in the Twin Cities for the past few years. He
graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in Management Information
Systems (MIS) and a minor in Marketing. He has been with City Connect since the startup and is
responsible for tailoring the application to meet the needs of our individual clients. Our first
project was working with Maple Grove High School, near Adams hometown, in an effort to get
their students more involved in the community. After seeing the success of that project, we knew
that we would have more success working with young professionals who are ready to start
planting some roots.
Diane Campbell, Lead Finance Executive
Diane was originally from a small city called Alexandria, in mid-Minnesota. She has a lot family
in the Fargo/Moorhead area, and many friends that went to school at NDSU. She likes the small
town feel of the area and has learned about many hidden features that others dont recognize. She
graduated from North Dakota State University with a degree in Finance. Diane has been
responsible for all of City Connects budgetary financial needs. She brought City Connect to
Alexandria to keep the high-school kids in the area. In Alexandria we focused on the community
college, and events they held to provide insight in all the possible jobs in the area. Others
vantage points in the area are Big Ole anniversary block party, Christmas lights turning on, 4th
of July at Arrowwood resort, and others. Within a few months, we started seeing gradual changes
of how many Alexandria area students were enrolling at Alexandria Technical and Community
College and simply staying in the area after graduation.
Darren Kelley, Business Administrator
Darren was born in the inner city of Baltimore, Maryland. He came to the
Fargo/Moorhead area to pursue his business administration degree on a football
scholarship at North Dakota State University. With his experience in both big cities and
more small town areas he provides great incentives on how to make City Connect
function as it is intended. As a business student he knows the ins and outs of running
operations, which includes: marketing, accounting, management and administration.
Darren promotes the City Connect app at multiple universities to ensure that young
professionals are active and involved in their cities. Due to his work, growth of the City
Connect app has now expanded to the D.C. (District of Columbia), Virginia, and
Maryland areas.
Emily Carson, Market Research Specialist
Emily was born and raised just south of Bismarck, ND. She attended North Dakota State
University where she graduated with a degree in Business Marketing. Since her graduation, she

has been very busy and active with City Connect, working as their first Market Research
Specialist. As such, Emily works to ensure that the business is properly portrayed to the public
and works to answer any arising questions or address any major concerns with the app or its
operations. Her small team of marketing personnel work to not only focus their attention on a
national level, but to ensure every individual community gets the attention and necessary
assistance to ensure the most success as possible. Emily worked to bring the app into the
Bismarck/Mandan area where she focused in on the exact interests and needs young business
professionals in the area wanted to see from their community. With the use of surveys, finding
this information allowed our company to specify what would ensure the most retainment of
millennials to the area. Emily is responsible for the apps expansion in the Midwest region of
North Dakota and continues to push westward.
Most of our customers have needs very similar to yours. The quality of local educational
facilities is one of the top things that bring people to an area, but it is up to the local businesses to
get them involved in the community and help them plant roots that will keep them there in the
long run.
Costs and Benefits
City Connect has a point system that encourages students to participate in as many activities as
possible. The point system is based off of the donation received by each organization that
chooses to be a part of City Connect. The benefit of City Connect to each individual company is
the exposure to a vast variety of new, young, and potentially permanent clientele. The base price
that each company will pay will be $100 per year, but we allow companies to increase this
donation, and subsequent point received, that both businesses and young professionals can
benefit from. Companies are encouraged to donate more because the more points a company
provides equates to more customers coming to collect the points.
Working with City Connect has other benefits as well. These are things that can be seen in both
tangible and intangible forms. Table 1 breaks down these extra benefits. First, you will receive
the benefit of being able to experience the application for yourself. Having City Connect
associated with NDSU makes the college seem more tech savvy and the scholarship that is
provided as a reward helps increase student interest in the school. By looking at data we collect
through our research, you will be able to see what restaurants and businesses students are most
attracted to.
Table 2 shows that other benefits of our application include economic growth, that can be linked
to increased participation in the community, and an overall rise in student morale. As an added
benefit, we have found that increased student morale leads to increased participation in City

Connect which continues the cycle and is a return benefit for everyone involved. To truly
understand all of the benefits that City Connect has to offer you need to experience it.
Table 1
Hard Benefits

Added (consequent) Benefits

The City Connect App

Increased clientele
Makes company/ community technology
savvy
Measurability

Scholarship

Draws attention
Increases interest

Data collected by us

What restaurants and businesses draw the

most points/clientele?
If things such as City Connect have an impact
on keeping young professionals in the FM
area

Table 2
Soft Benefits

Added (consequent) Benefits

Getting people connected to the community Economy grows

Increases the likelihood of students staying
after graduation
Students morale will rise

Scholarships motivated students

Increased morale will lead to more
participation

Gets the university more involved

Helps keep NDSU in touch with students

interest/desires

Economy Growth

Gives diversity in the world of small

businesses

 Provides promotion of the FM area and what

it has to offer

Conclusion
To sum everything up, our app, City Connect, has been proven to motivate more people to
explore and get active within their communities. Our application is accessible to anyone, at any
time, and anywhere, in North America. City Connect is not only a great opportunity for students
to gain access to scholarships, but is also a wonderful way to get everyone more informed and
more aware of the events occurring their community. Getting students out into the community
helps them to plant seeds of interest and commitment within their business and social lives.
Having done so, the likelihood of them staying and potentially growing roots into the community
after they graduate increases dramatically. The Fargo/Moorhead community has become more
aware of this situation and has taken actions with the intent of drawing young professionals into
the area. With our help, we can ensure they stay here.
At City Connect, weve done our research, and we truly believe that weve got the best software
system to help your communitys needs. With everything from layouts, directions, locations, and
the financials, City Connect can be personalized to meet the demands and requirements of your
campus. The benefits of City Connect dont just apply to students, but to each individual
company as they now get exposure to a vast, various, and constantly changing crowd. After
discussing our proposed plan and going over our individual qualifications, you can be assured
that we are committed to better your community aiding in keeping young professionals
connected to the changing world around them. So dont let another moment go to waste, its time
to be proactive and get your citizens connected to their city, one check-in at a time.

References
Easter, Sam. (2016) Young people proving to be North Dakotas fastest-growing demographic.
Retrieved from Grand Forks Herald
Easy Logo (2016) City Connect. Retrieved from.
http://www.easylogo.cn/language.en/logosearch/c/246/&color=teal
Smart Move (2010) Demographics. Retrieved from.
http://gfmedc.com/business/community-profile/demographics/

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Appendix A: Survey Questions

The following questions are optional and not a direct part of our survey, but answering them will
help us analyze your responses and help to develop trends:
Age:
Gender:
Race:
Grade in School (If Applicable):
Major:
Hometown:
1.

On a scale from 1- 5, how satisfied are you with the available activities in the FM area?
1
2
3
4
5

2.

How many days during the week, on average, do you spend time in downtown Fargo?
a.
0
b.
1-2
c.
3-4
d.
5-7

3.

How many days during the week, on average, do you spend time in Moorhead?
a.
0
b.
1-2
c.
3-4
d.
5-7

4.
On a scale from 1-5, how likely are you to recommend the Fargo/Moorhead area to high
school students looking for somewhere to attend college?
1
2
3
4
5
5.

Would having more culture in downtown affect your staying/leaving Fargo. Why?
a.
Yes
b.
No
Please Explain:

6.

How diverse do you consider the FM area to be?

a. Very diverse b. Mostly Diverse c. Neutral d. Minimally Diverse e. No diversity

7.
Fargo is popular for its unemployment rates, rental rates, nightlife, and access to
broadband internet, among other things. Think of something new on your own. What do you
think is the best thing about the Fargo/Moorhead area?
8.

What made you come to the F/M area?

9.

Does your future/intended career path allow you to stay in the F/M area?
a. Yes
b. No
If yes, do you plan on staying in the F/M area? Why?

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10.

What type of ethnic food would you like to see introduced into the area?

Appendix B: Focus Group Questions

1. What made you decide to come to school in Fargo?

2.

If you could do one thing to improve the quality of your college experience, (whether on campus
or in the surrounding area) what would it be? Why?

3. What is your favorite activity to do in Fargo that isnt school related?

4. Where do you plan to live after Graduation?

5. If you could create a brand-new campus to replace NDSU, what would it look like? What would
the focus/ main educational draw be?

6. If you have to come up with a new extracurricular activity for students, what would it be?

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