Action Greensboro landed on an innovative talent attraction strategy to welcome back Greensboro-born citizens and their family: a custom box featuring the latest updates on the revitalised Greensboro, locally sourced treats, and the knowledge that their friends and family missed them and hoped they’d relocate back to the city. Before she joins us at City Nation Place Americas 2025, we sat down with Cecelia Thompson, Executive Director of Action Greensboro, to discover how they worked with stakeholders to build a joined-up approach to attracting and retaining talent.

Congratulations on winning the award for Best Communication Strategy – Economic Development for your ‘Boomerang Boxes’. Can you give us a quick overview of what prompted the campaign and what the Boomerang Boxes are?

Action Greensboro is an economic development non-profit, located in Greensboro, North Carolina. We’re a consortium of nine local foundations who come together to deliver economic development work, and right now, we’re in the middle of our strategic plan focused on attraction and retention of skilled talent when we had the idea.

For example, we were already working with seven colleges and universities in Greensboro to provide paid internships to students that also include professional development opportunities and a chance to explore Greensboro as a young person, with the goal of retaining them post-graduation. That’s very successful – we have 200 students in the programme for the coming year, and around 86% of those leaving the programme say they want to stay in Greensboro. We also have a programme called Synergy Young Professionals which is a network that provides leadership training, professional development, and social activities to create that stickiness factor for young people to help them grow in our community.

But that was all retention, and then our stakeholders started to ask what would it take to recruit people to Greensboro? We were already seeing that ‘Boomerangs’ – people who left the city and then later returned with more experience – were hugely valuable for the community. They’re more likely to get involved by joining boards or PTAs and really care about the growth of the city.

Then the pandemic hit, and you could see new migration trends emerging with young families leaving major metro areas for midsized communities like Greensboro because of our affordability, our green spaces, our schools, and proximity to family. Ultimately, we landed this idea of creating a ‘Boomerang box’ to attract back people who lived here at one point in their lives.

We went to the community at large to ask, ‘Who do you wish would move back to Greensboro?’ and we ended up with a list of around 100 people. Then we started to mail out our signature Boomerang box that was filled with goodies and good news about Greensboro, with an invitation that we could act as a concierge service for anyone looking to move back. With that, we just try to help people make connections quicker than they would otherwise. Sometimes it’s a professional opportunity, sometimes it’s schools or daycares – once it was finding someone a cello instructor! But it’s all about speeding up that process and ensuring there’s a warm welcome back home.

Did you face any challenges along the way? How did you overcome these?

I wouldn’t call this a failure, but certainly it was a learning opportunity – people are understandably hesitant to give you someone’s address. We did an online social media campaign to ask Boomers to help us invite their kids and grandkids back, and while the campaign got a high click through, we only had one submission. Which makes sense in retrospect, but you have to build that trust first.

Something else we’ve had to be creative with is helping people find work, because they’re often coming from different industries than what we have in Greensboro. We have to understand what transferrable skills they have, and then serve as a translator for that talent to a prospective employer.

For everyone using our concierge desk, we help them craft a bio that is applicable to the industries that we have. Then I share that with my email list of business leaders – both personal relationships and those on the board of the Greensboro Chamber – with the names and bios of our latest Boomerangs looking to relocate and a Dropbox link to their resume.

It wouldn’t work in every community, but because we’re a population of 300,000, it works for us. Sometimes, I’ll even make specific introductions if I can see a strong synergy.

It was a very community-first approach that you adopted. Did you learn any lessons that you will take forward into future citizen engagement strategies?

We often talk about high touch and high-tech systems, and the Boomerang approach is very much high-touch. But there are lessons to learn, for sure. Currently, we’re running a campaign to encourage businesses to get the North Carolina certification around family friendly workplace benefits. It’s a different topic, but we’ve learnt that in Greensboro, a high touch works really well. It’s about finding the people who have relationships to community groups and can say ‘this is good for our city’ rather than offering free application waivers. It takes a bit more time, but the personal nature is really effective, especially when you have a compelling message about why this is benefiting the community.

We’re also in the beta phase for a new Boomerang strategy, where we’re using data to identify communities that are losing talent and then running commercials in those markets. It’s proving successful, but the turnaround rate is much slower. You get feedback immediately from a high touch strategy, whereas a high-tech strategy needs to stew longer; it’s more about brand awareness.

It’s about finding the balance between the two approaches.

Do you see a difference in the data you use to drive your strategy?

It’s a little early to say! But what we’re finding is that community data has quicker turn around. It’s not just an outreach from someone on my team inviting you to return – it’s your peers and family members telling you they want you to come back. Which helps, because you’re not the only one selling Greensboro, whereas the high-tech approach is much more self-nominated and the village around that person is much smaller.

You partnered with a number of stakeholders to get this off the ground. How did you work to engage people in the value of your strategy?

Funny you should mention this, because I had a drink with one of my board members last week who confessed that they had no idea if this would work! When we launched the campaign to get names from the community, we did presentations with Rotary Clubs and other civic organisations, just trying to get in front of people so we could explain the vision. I think people had this view that it was a weird idea, but they bought into it enough to give us a name and an opportunity to try!

And then we try different avenues to diversify our prospect. Private schools often have alumni lists, so we try to partner with them to send out thematic proposals.

And of course, we do lots of advertising to increase the brand with the general public that feature Boomerangs. People have a lot of pride because they either know a Boomerang, or they get excited about bringing people back to the community. We’ve also started seeing people talk about being a ‘Boomerang’ entirely separate to our own work, which is amazing. 

What can place leaders do to make a real impact for their community, even if resources or budget are tight?

We operate on a lean budget. One of our biggest learnings is not to underestimate the resources you have on your team already. When we first started, we hired someone to deliver our concierge service, but it was a big portion of the budget and at the end of the day, they just don’t have the same relationship with Greensboro as we do. We’re not a big place, and it’s just more efficient to do it ourselves. And it doesn’t necessarily matter what the skill set is of the team member on the call, because at the first stage, they’re just sharing what they love about the city. And they work here, so they’ve already made that choice!

You can also work with your private sector in interesting ways. It’s small, but when we include popcorn in the box from a local vendor, and they give us a nice deal on that because it’s good promotion for them too. Finally, be agile. It sounds obvious, but think about what works, and if it doesn’t, don’t do it again!

What’s next for Action Greensboro?

We did a specific campaign to attract talent for our Aviation industry, and we’re now in conversation with a healthcare organisation looking at how we can deliver a similar version to recruit nurses to (or back to!) Greensboro.

We’re also trying to increase our alumni prospects from high schools, but they’re just not that organised. You get a list of 2001 graduates, with a random person who organises the list for reunions, so it’s about building relationships with those people.

And we’re doing fundraising. It’s not sexy, but now that businesses are starting to hire our Boomerangs, we’re looking to go back to them to ask for extra support for the campaign.

Thank you, Cecelia – and we look forward to seeing you in Ottawa later this year!

Action Greensboro's Cecilia Thompson will be speaking about how you can engage your community to retain and attract talent, and how you can work with educational and private sector partners to build a joined-up approach to talent attraction and retention at City Nation Place Americas. Join us in Ottawa this May 21-22nd to learn more from Cecelia and place leaders from across North America.