The second year of the ‘Holding Our Own’ Shop Soldotna Program, which concluded on December 15th, was a big financial success for the for the city of Soldotna. Utilizing $310,000 in CARES Act funding from the city, the initiative was launched on November 15, 2021, and ran through December 14th, ending a day earlier than the planned end date of December 15th. The program motivated over $1M in local spending through incentivizing dollars spent. For $200 spent shopping in Soldotna, participants received a $100 voucher of their choice to spend at local participating businesses by the end of 2021.
Shanon Davis, Executive Director with the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce told KSRM that the Chamber experienced a huge surge of late program participants:
“We had a tremendous influx between noon and 4:30 p.m. on that Tuesday the 14th. We received 250 online requests for vouchers, which is absolutely unheard of and that’s actually why it tipped that scale instead of the program having expended all of its funds before the 15th.”
Davis provides the numbers from this year’s Shop Soldotna Program:
“We ended up sending out checks to pay for vouchers to 68 businesses in Soldotna. 68 businesses were helped by this program. We had, through our offices during the course of the one-month program, 1,674 people walk into our office to get their voucher. We had 1,426 who sent their voucher request with their receipts online through our drop form. We had 91 people from outside the Peninsula participate in the program. We had 46 people from outside the state of Alaska as their physical address participate as well. Just under half of the participants were from outside of Soldotna. I think that really is cool and says a lot about the impact of the program and the bringing people from other areas to Soldotna to shop and we can’t thank everybody enough for participating. We are sorry the program did run out money one day early.”
The Soldotna Chamber of Commerce said that they are proud to have administered the program for the City, to the benefit of Soldotna businesses and Kenai Peninsula residents. The Chamber states that every dollar spent locally turns over in the community seven times.
