CAPCOR is a private, nonprofit organization chartered for economic development in Capital City, the state capital, and the surrounding counties. CAPCOR is funded through membership dues paid by local businesses and money from the state’s lottery. For years, CAPCOR’s only mission was to bring companies to Capital City and its surrounding counties. Archibald Poole was then brought into the organization by CAPCOR’s directors. As they believed focus needed to be expanded onto helping the firms already residing in Capital City survive and grow, Poole was given the position of director of business expansion and retention. Along with Poole, there are four other employees. Russel Bowman, the president of CAPCOR, Sarah Rand, the office manager, Thomas Floyd, the public relations director, Hal Chandra, the management intern.

Following Bowman’s suggestion, Poole began to seek funding to enhance the Business Expansion and Retention program. Poole hastily submitted two partially finished grant proposal outlines to RSIC (Regional Strategic Initiative Committee). One of these outlines was meant to fund a CAPCOR Business Consulting Program and the other was meant to create the CAPCOR Export Assistance Center. The CAPCOR Business Consulting Program was modeled after the Business Support Service (BSS) in order to fill a void that would be left in his economic development work at BSS, an organization that had previously provided CAPCOR with support, was facing significant budget cuts. Poole received a promise of full cooperation from Nigel Remington, the director of BSS, along with a pledge of administrative support. Things, however, got more complicated as Kirk and Poole further interacted. Kirk and Bowman, through previous and unrelated events, created a strained relationship between RSIC and CAPCOR. After meeting with Poole, Kirk suggested a meeting based on interest in international trade and faxed over a list of suggestions. If things went well and support was demonstrated during the meeting, Kirk would run the proposals by RSIC.

As time went by and Poole waited for formal presentations of proposals to begin, he began to heavily favor the Business Consulting Program grant. It was an easy sell while the Export Assistance Center was already receiving pushback. While Poole wanted to drop this program entirely, Bowman supported enthusiastically and the meeting that Kirk had suggested went on. Bowman, Poole, and Chandra went as CAPCOR’s representatives. Other agencies, six in total, had one representative each. Murdock, a director of the SBECC and Nifelheim, an assistant director of the Capital City SBAC, immediately expressed resistance. The rest of the representatives seemed in favor and the meeting ended with Bowman deciding that CAPCOR would pursue the proposal. The formal presentation date was pushed back once more, but Kirk assured Poole that the Business Consulting Program seemed worthwhile and would probably approved.

In order to quell any worries, Poole met with Murdok and Nifelheim. The meeting ended in disaster, however, as Murdock claimed he would only express support for the proposal if SBECC got a portion of the grant money. Nifelheim, meanwhile, wanted SBAC to administer the grant. This caused a heated argument that ended in uncertainty and a fear of Murdok and Nifelheim withdrawing support not only for the Export Assistance Center, but the Business Consulting Program as well. This would mean that an entire summer of work had been wasted and that the $30,000 Poole hoped to secure could no longer be counted on.