2024 Entrepreneurship Gamechanger Merit Award Winner – Downtown Wytheville!

The Virginia Main Street (VMS) program’s Entrepreneurship Gamechanger merit award highlights programs, policies, or initiatives that nurture and support individuals or emerging small businesses to develop their ideas, products, and/or services into viable, competitive businesses. The 2024 award went to Downtown Wytheville, Inc. (DTW) for their Grow with Google program!

In 2023, DTW signed on as a Grow with Google training partner as part of a nationwide Google-Main Street America pilot project in 10 states. To implement the program, DTW leveraged both in-kind and grant support from Google, Main Street America (MSA), Virginia Main Street (VMS), UVA Wise, Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center and Locus Community Focused Capital.

DTW intended its Grow with Google program to assist small businesses in rural areas. It provided Google certified training to 1,936 individuals across Southwest Virginia, Central Appalachia and the entire state of Virginia. Many of the businesses assisted were engaged in tourism, travel and hospitality, as well as being critical for the revitalization of downtown Wytheville and other downtowns in Central Appalachia and Virginia. The organization’s 25 trainings, plus small group coaching and countless one-on-one technical assistance sessions, focused on pandemic recovery for small businesses by building their digital presence and capacity for e-commerce with the expertise of locally-based Grow with Google coach, Courtney Stringer.

“This program has literally been a “gamechanger” for our organization and extending our brand and business network capacity not just here in Wytheville, but throughout the region and across the entire Commonwealth. We can’t thank Main Steet America and Google enough for choosing Downtown Wytheville as one of the 12 organizations across the nation to participate.”

– Todd Wolford, Executive Director, Downtown Wytheville, Inc.

Of the 10 selected communities to pilot the Grow with Google program, Downtown Wytheville was ranked 2nd in number of businesses trained, making Virginia one of the most successful of the states selected.