Ann Arbor Spark

“A draft of the form 990 is distributed to the finance committee and ceo prior to filing.”

“Members of the board of directors, executive committee and key staff must annually sign a statement concerning potential conflicts of interest. These statements are periodically reviewed by the finance committee to determine if further examination or action is needed. If an conflict of interest exists, ann arbor spark follows up with the executive committee, the executive committee decides if further action in necessary.”

“Compensation committee - the governance committee is responsible for evaluating and establishing the salary and benefits for the ceo and key employees. Staff prepares statistics on comparative salary data from similar organizations for benchmarking. This data, along with performance data, is used by the governance committee to determine compensation for the following fiscal year.”

“Compensation committee - the governance committee is responsible for evaluating and establishing the salary and benefits for the ceo and key employees. Staff prepares statistics on comparative salary data from similar organizations for benchmarking. This data, along with performance data, is used by the governance committee to determine compensation for the following fiscal year.”

“The organization shares information that falls within parameters agreed upon by our funders, clients and portfolio companies. Spark posts its audited financial statements on our website. The 990 is available as public information on guidestar.com. Governing documents and policies are not usually available to the general public, although the state of michigan department of licensing and regulatory affairs website provides public access to ann arbor spark's articles of incorporation.”

“Ann arbor spark advances the region by encouraging and supporting business acceleration, attraction, expansion and retention. Our organization identifies and meets the needs of companies at every stage, from start-ups to large organizations. Ann arbor spark collaborates with business, academic, government and community investment partners to position the region as a destination for innovation.”

“Volunteers include board and committe members.”

“Business incubator/accelerator services spark creates long term regional prosperity by accelerating the growth of start-ups and early stage companies through support by offering direct and consultant services. Spark creates a place where early stage companies can conduct business at affordable rates and can co-locate with other entrepreneurs and in the eco-system. Spark offers those companies educational and networking events in the incubator space. We create an ecosystem whereby start-ups can connect easily with resources they need at early stages, thus attracting start-ups to this region. This supports growth in the companies themselves, the direct support services, and in the region's economy as a whole creating a virtuous cycle of economic growth. Assisted 165 innovation start-ups which currently employ 761 fte. Nurtured 86 incubator tenants.”

“Business development (expansion, attraction, retention spark maximizes potential jobs and capital investment in the region and helps grow the region's gdp through the retention and expansion of established driving industry companies and the targeted attraction domestically and internationally of similar companies that fit the region's identified clusters. This is done by regular communication with local business to determine their needs, making key business introductions, assisting with site selection, collaboration with local municipalities, and assisting companies in working with local academic partners to communicate talent needs.31 company growth projects with projected investment of 132m, 534 jobs projected by the companies, and 1,192 jobs retained in the region.”

“Communication and community engagement spark uses its established platform of social media followers, website traffic and brand awareness to expand local, regional, state-wide, national, and global awareness of the ann arbor region's attractiveness for business location, and career and life opportunities. Spark also promotes community events that market the region as a great place to start a business and/or work for a start-up. Our week long series of events, a2tech360, had 15 total events and over 6,000 registered attendees, 1,000,000 social media views and 42,000 web page views. 36% of our website traffic goes to our regional job portal, for 2019 we assisted 179 companies with 739 job postings.”

“Capital funding: michigan angel fund, michigan preseed fund. The mission of our funding programs is to support high-tech companies throughout the state at their earliest stages of development and position these high growth companies to be able to raise additional capital and investment. The capital programs are an intentional economic development tool that pays itself back, allowing the funds to be redeployed for future reinvestment into more companies. With 147 members and 30 companies in its portfolio, michigan angel fund (maf) is the largest angel organization in michigan. It fills an important funding gap by investing in very early stage companies across the state that are not yet primed for venture and other sources of capital. Maf is managed by ann arbor spark with support from the michigan economic development corporation. The michigan preseed fund is designed to retain entrepreneurial companies in our state and support them throughout their life cycle, these are purposely high-risk investments with a forecast of about 60% projected to reach the next level of funding.”

“Consultant fees 1,664,884 48,675 4,500 consultant fees 13,769 0 0 total 1,678,653 48,675 4,500”