Mainebiz

V O L . X X V I N O. I X M AY 5 , 2 0 2 0 12 B U S I N E S S M A I N E B U S I N E S S M A I N E B U S I N E S S N E W S F RO M A RO U N D T H E S TAT E in bonuses to municipal employees, but with a requirement that they spend the money at Caribou-based companies. Employees who worked full-time in 2019 or 2020 would be eligible for $500 in gift cards valid at the merchants; part-timers would receive $250. To receive the one-time fringe benefit, a qualified employee would choose a variety of gift cards from a list of over 300 businesses providing them, according to a city memo. e bonus is intended "to show appreciation to employees for their work and help the local economy" during the pandemic, City Manager Dennis Marker wrote in the memo. Caribou, the second- largest city in Aroostook County, has a population of 7,600 and spends about $10 million annually on municipal services. It tightened budgets in 2019 and much of the resulting $300,000 surplus was ear- marked for a rainy-day fund and to offset future taxes. N O T E W O R T H Y N O R T H E R N & E A S T E R N MMG Insurance in Presque Isle do- nated $25,000 to Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine to support relief for COVID-19 related food insecurity in Aroostook County. Katahdin Bankshares Corp., Houlton- based parent company of Katahdin Trust Co., announced first-quarter earnings of $1.26 million, or 38 cents per common share. Total assets reached $903.7 mil- lion on March 31, an increase of $52.8 million over year-end and $103.6 million over the first quarter of 2019. The University of Maine System said its universities have been allocated $17.2 million in funding through the CARES Act. The act requires that half of these dollars, $8.63 million, go di- rectly to students to cover emergency expenses arising from the disruption in campus operations. At Maine Community Foundation, we never stop thinking about Maine's needs and how we can help tackle them. When you become a MaineCF donor, you can make a difference by directing funds to organizations and issues that matter to you. Let's work together to address what matters most, to you and Maine. You think a lot about what matters most. So do we. 877-700-6800 / mainecf.org Ellsworth / Portland Photo Jerry Monkman Q. The lockdown is frustrating because my work involves face-to-face consultation with small groups of people. How can I make productive use of this period? ACE advises: This down time can be an excellent opportunity to do research or self-evaluation. It's also a good time for the product or service upgrade you had not had the time or mental space to do very thoroughly. Spend some time now reviewing the websites and other online material posted by your competitors and by university people and others who are experts in your field. Look for information and ideas you can use to enhance your presentations. You should have received evaluations of your work from those you have worked with. Review the evaluations in light of what your online research has told you. If you don't have such results, con- tact past participants and managers who hired you, and ask them to comment on your work. Besides helping you see ways to improve your consulting services, this process will provide you with ideas for new consulting designs and approaches. A product extension you could consider might be articles or booklets you could publish for sale and/or distribution to provide added value to your consultation work. One example of how this can work would be to create surveys for online presentation to other consultants or to executives in your market. Providing the results to those surveyed can be a reputation builder for you. You also can write articles on this material, both for sharing with your colleagues and for presentation to your target market. What is most important about your approach to his unprecedented time is that you use it to add value to your work. A S K AC E A n s w e r e d B y J i m M i l l i k e n The Association for Consulting Expertise (ACE) is a non-profit association of independent consultants who value "Success through Collaboration." The public is welcome to attend its regular meetings to share best practices and engage with industry experts. For more information go to www.consultexpertise.com. Jim Milliken is a newly retired management training consultant in Portland. He can be contacted at millikenproject@gmail.com This is a good time to upgrade the product or service you had not had time for until now.

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