Community Foundation for South Central NY announces $142,705 in additional grants for nonprofit needs related to COVID-19 crisis

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JOHNSON CITY — The Community Foundation for South Central New York announced it has released an additional $142,705 in grants to organizations providing essential services to the individuals and communities they serve during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The grants went to the following organizations. • Tioga Opportunities — $10,000 for the Tioga County Funders COVID-19 Response […]

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• Tioga Opportunities — $10,000 for the Tioga County Funders COVID-19 Response Fund

• Otsego County Department of Health — $5,000 for a public-awareness campaign on social distancing

• Delaware Valley Humane Society — $5,000 for increased capacity at the shelter as owners surrender animals they can no longer afford

• Good Shepherd Communities Foundation — $5,000 for personal protective equipment at Chase Nursing Home

• Second Baptist Church of Edmeston — $10,000 for its Community Cupboard meal delivery and pantry program

• ONC-BOCES — $7,292 for materials to 3D print personal protective equipment for local health-care providers

• Helios Care – Oneonta — $10,000 for personal protective equipment for hospice staff

• Catholic Charities of Tompkins/Tioga — $20,000 for direct support to individuals (rent, food, car repair, etc.)

• Catskill Center for Independence — $8,000 for its meal and prescription-delivery program to community members with disabilities

• VINES — $5,000 for its partnership with local restaurants supplying meals to essential workers on-the-job “As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, community nonprofits and the people they serve are struggling day-by-day. Our community member review panel is meeting weekly to review applications to our emergency fund so we can support as many essential needs as possible,” Diane Brown, executive director at the Community Foundation for South Central New York, said in a statement.

The Community Foundation for South Central NY is a nonprofit organization founded in 1997 and headquartered in Johnson City. It encourages and facilitates personal and institutional philanthropy throughout the region by managing 126 funds within the foundation’s endowment that are established by donors to achieve specific charitable goals. From these funds, the foundation has awarded more than $16 million in grants to the area’s nonprofits. The Community Foundation for South Central NY serves donors and nonprofits in five New York counties: Broome, Chenango, Delaware, Otsego, and Tioga.

Secure Network Technologies pivots to attack response

Small Business, Subscriber Only, Technology

SYRACUSE — Secure Network Technologies, Inc.’s newest product is a natural evolution of the services the company has provided since day one. Founded in 1997, Secure Network Technologies (SNT) has always focused on helping its clients find and repair security breaches in their computer systems. Fast forward to 2020 and “cybercrime is on the uptick,”

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SYRACUSE — Secure Network Technologies, Inc.’s newest product is a natural evolution of the services the company has provided since day one.

Founded in 1997, Secure Network Technologies (SNT) has always focused on helping its clients find and repair security breaches in their computer systems. Fast forward to 2020 and “cybercrime is on the uptick,” says Steve Stasiukonis, managing partner. Now add in threats like anonymous cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin and ransomware attacks, he says, and that’s where SNT’s newest product N.I.R.V. can help.

Short for Network Intrusion Response Vehicle, N.I.R.V. is a tool SNT can deploy to a company when there is an issue. “When they get hacked or broken into, the first thing they want is someone to show up on their doorstep to help them,” Stasiukonis says. Now, SNT can ship an N.I.R.V. kit to companies for them to patch into their network and it’s just like having an SNT technician on site.

“This is a game changer,” he says, even more so with the current situation in New York and around the country where many companies have shifted to a home workforce with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We can be on their network in an hour,” says Kevin Conley, SNT’s president. With the N.I.R.V. incident-response system, SNT can hunt for malicious software, conduct a vulnerability analysis, and provide an immediate response to ransomware attacks.

SNT launched the product on April 1 and is rolling N.I.R.V. out slowly through its reseller channels as best it can with the current New York State on PAUSE executive order. That state directive has shut down much of business and daily life in the state since March 22 and is scheduled to continue until at least May 15.

There are three levels of subscription-based service, Conley says, raging from a platinum level where the client keeps an N.I.R.V. unit on site for immediate deployment down to a single-incident service.

“We’re really just trying to add layers of protection,” he says. “The criminals out there are as sophisticated, if not more sophisticated, than the companies out there.” With N.I.R.V., SNT wants to keep its clients ahead of the hackers.

Along with launching N.I.R.V., SNT also recently spun off one area of its services into its own website to increase visibility of that service, Stasiukonis says.

The site, www.prosintsecure.com, launched last October and is now the marketing hub for SNT’s digital-intelligence investigation services. For years, the company has worked with lawyers who needed assistance in putting together cases against people who maligned their employers online.

“People are putting so much information on the internet,” Stasiukonis says. Prosint simply combs through those public postings and compiles the information.

Prosint can also provide travel advisory services to help corporate executives and high-net-worth individuals mitigate travel-security concerns, including listing acceptable hotels, medical providers, and more for areas around the world.

While the COVID-19 crisis has made it challenging to market new products and services, it really is the time companies should be looking into security solutions, Conley says. “Now’s the time the bad guys will be looking into getting into networks,” he notes.

Conley says SNT generated year-over-year sales growth of 100 percent in the first quarter and he expects that trend to continue for the rest of this year. He declines to disclose the company’s revenue total.

As the new N.I.R.V. product and Prosint investigative services take off, Conley says he hopes to add three new employees to the company’s current staff of nine.

Headquartered at 247 W. Fayette St. in Syracuse, Secure Network Technologies (www.securenetworkinc.com) also recently moved its offices from the second floor to the third floor in the building. The company now operates from 4,000 square feet of space that is more modern and laid out more efficiently for the business, Conley says.

Raymond Corp. to produce more than 2,000 face shields for local health-care professionals

Health Care, Manufacturing & Engineering, Regional News, Subscriber Only

GREENE — The Raymond Corporation says engineers and staff at its plant in the Chenango County town of Greene recently began to 3D print face shields to provide local doctors, nurses, and first responders with needed personal protective equipment (PPE). The manufacturing firm expects to produce more than 2,000 face shields to be distributed to

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Survey of upstate CEOs reveals severe impact of coronavirus on businesses

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Only 31 percent of upstate New York CEOs expect New York State’s economy to return to pre-virus levels of revenue and employment within six months, but 72 percent believe it will recover by the first quarter of 2021 according to a recent survey from the Siena College Research Institute (SCRI). SCRI’s Upstate New York Business

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SCRI’s Upstate New York Business Leader COVID-19 Survey was conducted April 3-14 by online interviews with 307 CEOs from across upstate New York including the Capital region, Central New York, the Finger Lakes region, the Mohawk Valley, the Southern Tier, and Western New York. The survey’s overall margin of error is +/-5.6 percentage points.

The survey results, released on April 16, reveal that the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on upstate businesses has been significant.

• Forty percent of respondents have laid off employees.

• Almost one-quarter (23 percent) have closed at least one location.

• Expectations for 2020 revenue and profit have been lowered due to the crisis. Eighty-nine percent of the surveyed CEOs predicted “somewhat” (32 percent) or “significantly” (57 percent) less revenue due to the pandemic and 87 percent forecast “somewhat” (27 percent) or “significantly” (60 percent) less profits.

• Over half (58 percent) now plan to purchase fewer fixed assets in 2020 than they did at the start of the year.

• Just under two-thirds (64 percent) have postponed or canceled new initiatives.

• Twenty-eight percent have contacted suppliers, landlords, or financial institutions about the need to delay payments.

• Forty-four percent have been notified by clients that they will have difficulty paying on time.

In spite of the negative impacts, 89 percent of the respondents were at least somewhat confident that their business “will survive this crisis and be in business a year from today.” Only 8 percent of respondents said they are “not too confident” or “not at all confident” of surviving.

A majority were also supportive of New York’s ongoing social-distancing policies. Fifty-seven percent of the CEOs said the state’s primary focus should be addressing the public-health crisis, while only 35 percent said New York should plan to relax restrictions on business operations and move towards being back in business by May 1. (Note: The survey was conducted prior to Gov. Andrew Cuomo extending the statewide restrictions on much of business and daily life to May 15.)

“Despite having to lay off workers and downgrade economic projections, a majority of upstate CEOs agree with the sentiment expressed by one CEO: ‘people and health first, the economy can wait.’ The good news is that virtually all the CEOs we interviewed expect their business to survive this crisis. And 61 percent think that New York State’s ‘social distancing’ efforts, including restrictions on business operations in order to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 have been about right,” SCRI Director Dr. Don Levy said in a release summarizing the findings.

The survey results showed that optimism regarding state assistance was mixed. Forty-six percent were confident that “New York State government will take the appropriate steps to assist businesses to weather the impacts of COVID-19,” while 50 percent were “not very” or “not at all” confident.

Confidence was higher in the federal government, with 59 percent saying they were “somewhat” or “very” confident that the federal government would take the appropriate steps to assist New York businesses.

Eighty-six percent said they were at least somewhat familiar with the new and expanded U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) loan provisions. Almost three-quarters (72 percent) planned to participate in the SBA Paycheck Protection Program and 26 percent said they planned to partake in the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program.

The survey was sponsored by the Business Council of New York State, the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce, CenterStateCEO, and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

“The results of this poll showed what many expected; businesses are hurting, especially smaller businesses and those in sectors whose operations have been most impacted by the reasonable state-imposed restrictions. Perhaps the most encouraging result showed employers expect their own companies and their industry sectors to recover by early 2021,” Heather Briccetti, president and CEO of the Business Council of New York State, said in the release.

Robert Simpson, president of CenterState CEO, added, “The scale of the economic disruption we are experiencing is unprecedented. Direct business insight is critical to economic development organizations like ours as we work to assess, respond and mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

SCRI, an independent, non-partisan research institute, conducts political, economic, social, and cultural research primarily in New York state. Additional survey details, including cross-tabs and frequencies are available at: www.Siena.edu/SCRI.

Oneida County hotel occupancy rate plummets nearly 42 percent in March

Sports, Entertainment & Tourism, Subscriber Only

UTICA, N.Y. — Hotels in Oneida County saw a massive decrease in guests in March, as the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting government shutdowns of much of business and daily life in New York took effect, starting mid-month. The hotel occupancy rate (rooms sold as a percentage of rooms available) in the county plunged 41.7

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Survey: 55 percent of CNY firms reduce workforce in COVID-19 crisis

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Small Business, Subscriber Only

SYRACUSE — More than half (55 percent) of responding Central New York businesses reported a decrease in product demand during the coronavirus shutdown that led them to implement layoffs, reduced operating hours, shifts, or workdays. That’s according to a new survey from CenterState CEO, which also found 10 percent of firms are looking to hire

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That’s according to a new survey from CenterState CEO, which also found 10 percent of firms are looking to hire employees to meet new demand during the crisis. One out of five manufacturers reported an increase in demand requiring hiring.

Those findings are part of CenterState CEO’s Phase 1 COVID-19 Business Impact Survey of area businesses. The economic-development organization’s officials released details during a virtual media roundtable held April 16.

The survey found 34 percent of businesses saying that supply chain impacts are “high or of the highest impact.” That number is up from 15 percent on March 23, CenterState CEO said.

The survey’s first phase was available between March 19 and April 8, generating 263 responses in that time.

Robert Simpson, president and CEO of CenterState CEO, said his organization called more than 1,500 members in the upstate business community, “trying to understand … how they’re being influenced and impacted by the economic reality that we find ourselves in.”

In those conversations, Simpson said the organization heard “a lot of anxiety, a lot of concern, a lot of uncertainty, but also I think a very significant amount of care and concern for those business owners’ employees.”

CenterState CEO on April 9 launched the second phase of its COVID-19 Business Impact Survey. As of April 15, the survey’s second phase has generated more than 50 responses.

Survey’s second phase

Initial findings from the Phase 2 COVID-19 Business Impact Survey indicate that revenue and customers are “ongoing challenges,” and many companies have had to reduce payroll, but some firms are seeking to add employees.

The survey also found that 75 percent of respondents applied for the Paycheck Protection Program, which offers potentially forgivable, low-interest loans to help small businesses keep their employees.

CenterState CEO will continue to track responses to the Phase 2 COVID-19 Business Impact Survey and offer updates on its COVID-19 Business Resources page, the organization said.

CNY, state unemployment rates rose in March as pandemic began to hit hard

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Subscriber Only

Unemployment rates in the Syracuse, Utica– Rome, Watertown–Fort Drum, Binghamton, Ithaca, and Elmira regions rose in March compared to a year ago as the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic began to materialize. The figures are part of the latest New York State Department of Labor data released April 21. The department indicated that the

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The figures are part of the latest New York State Department of Labor data released April 21. The department indicated that the worst is yet to come.

“While these data broadly reflect the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and related public-health efforts on the state’s labor market, it is important to note the March reference period for this survey occurred before many coronavirus-related business and school closures were implemented. In addition, data-collection rates were lower than normal due to coronavirus-related challenges. As a result, the scope of coronavirus-related unemployment from March is not fully reflected in these figures,” the state Labor Department said in its report.

New York state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose from 3.7 percent in February to 4.5 percent in March. The 0.8 percentage point change was the state’s largest recorded monthly increase, “since at least 1976.” In addition, the number of unemployed New York State residents rose by 73,900, while labor-force levels dropped by 132,300 — “both monthly records,” per the state Labor Department. That’s according to the latest monthly employment report that the department issued April 16.

The April 16 data also indicates that the Syracuse area was the only CNY region that had more jobs (only 100 more) in March 2019 relative to a year ago. The Utica–Rome, Binghamton, Watertown–Fort Drum, Ithaca, and Elmira area all lost jobs in March compared to a year prior.

Regional unemployment rates

The jobless rate in the Syracuse area was 4.9 percent in March, up from 4.6 percent a year earlier.

The Utica–Rome region’s rate rose to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent; the Watertown–Fort Drum area posted 7.5 percent unemployment, up from 6.4 percent; the Binghamton region’s rate hit 5.6 percent compared to 5 percent a year prior; the Ithaca area’s jobless rate edged up to 3.7 percent from 3.5 percent; and the unemployment rate in the Elmira region was 4.9 percent in March, up from 4.4 percent 12 months ago.

The local-unemployment data isn’t seasonally adjusted, meaning the figures don’t reflect seasonal influences such as holiday hires.

Utica College freezes tuition for 2020-21 academic year

Employee Benefits & Human Resources, Health Care, Nonprofits, Regional News

UTICA, N.Y. — Utica College will freeze its tuition for the 2020-2021 academic year, Laura Casamento, school president, announced Friday. This applies to on-campus undergraduate

New York egg production rises nearly 1 percent

Subscriber Only

New York farms produced 145.5 million eggs in March, up almost 1 percent from 144.3 million eggs in the year-ago period, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reported. The number of layers in the Empire State averaged nearly 5.62 million in March, up 2 percent from almost 5.51 million layers a year prior. March

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How To Make Smart Marketing Decisions Through a Pandemic

Business Mentors, Subscriber Only

Exploring the Five Rs In the midst of the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, many companies may be facing uncertainty around their advertising and public-relations strategies. With changing budgets, staffing, and environments, it is essential to foster appropriate communication between your business and your customers. Below are the five steps to making smart marketing decisions during and

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Exploring the Five Rs

In the midst of the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic, many companies may be facing uncertainty around their advertising and public-relations strategies. With changing budgets, staffing, and environments, it is essential to foster appropriate communication between your business and your customers. Below are the five steps to making smart marketing decisions during and after the pandemic:

1. Reflect: Before creating or adjusting your marketing strategy, you first need to look at your company as a whole. Reach out (and keep reaching out) to your major stakeholders — your top customer segments, employees, and board members, etc. Do more listening than talking. Ask about what they are seeing, feeling, and what they want/need from your business during this time and after the shutdown lifts.

2. Reassure: More than anything, consumers want to know that your company is there for them. That reassuring started with what you were doing to protect them and stop COVID-19’s spread — sanitation efforts, reduced hours, digital offerings, etc. Now, it’s about what discounts and/or informative advice you can give your customers, along with what philanthropic support you can give your community.

3. Reinvent: While this might not be the best time to run your previously scheduled ads, it may be the perfect time to consider a fresh perspective or a possible shift in brand positioning. Give a new look to that old marketing plan. Anything you’re seeing differently in light of COVID-19? Keep in mind, in previous recessions, some of the best ideas for new products and even entire companies came out of this process.

4. Relay: Once you have reflected, reassured, and at least considered reinventing, now it’s time to relay your new set of messages. Resist the urge to pull back advertising spend completely, which could diminish your brand’s resilience and interrupt its momentum. Position yourself as a calm, resilient, and collaborative partner who anticipates the brighter future ahead for all of us.

5. Recover: Anticipate the post-pandemic release, particularly the pent-up consumption of goods and services that help consumers destress, maintain security, and feel “back to normal.” Embrace the new behaviors learned during shutdown, including all those technology barriers overcome.

Jamie Jacobs is partner at Riger Marketing Communications. Contact her at jjacobs@riger.com. (Note: Binghamton University intern Kaitlyn Liu assisted with this article.)

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