North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission

North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, a U.S. local government entity (10-county regional planning organization), acts as a prime recipient for federal grants in regional economic development, planning, and geospatial data acquisition, with minimal subcontract exposure and one recent federal contract purchase order.

NCWRPC is headquartered in Wausau, Wisconsin, and operates as a regional planning commission across Adams, Forest, Juneau, Langlade, Lincoln, Marathon, Oneida, Portage, Vilas, and Wood counties in central and northern Wisconsin. As a government entity, NCWRPC does not hold SBA designations and competes in full-and-open federal procurements without set-aside positioning. The organization's federal footprint reflects its core mission: coordinating regional economic development strategy, providing planning and technical assistance, and delivering geospatial mapping and orthophotography services.

NCWRPC's customer concentration is heavily skewed toward the Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration, which accounts for fourteen awards (95% of recent award count by volume). The Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs Midwest Region awarded a $215,107.50 firm fixed-price purchase order on May 23, 2025, for the Wisconsin Regional Orthophotography Consortium 2025 project — digital orthoimagery and elevation data acquisition throughout Wisconsin to support Great Lakes Agency operations, with ultimate completion on May 22, 2026. The Department of Agriculture National Resources Conservation Service and the Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration each placed two awards. The combined potential value across all awards stands at $215 thousand; however, obligated dollars total $4.6 million, indicating a substantial gap between announced ceilings and actual invoiced performance — a signal that NCWRPC's real revenue footprint significantly exceeds the stated potential value.

Representative prime grant awards include a $420,000 Economic Development Administration project grant (CFDA 11.302) awarded April 1, 2023, for update and implementation of a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy across the ten-county region through March 2026, and a $150,000 Economic Development Administration grant awarded January 1, 2026, under the Economic Development Support for Planning Organizations program (CFDA 11.302) to develop entrepreneurship-support tools and a regional economic resiliency plan through June 30, 2027. NCWRPC also received a cooperative agreement from the National Resources Conservation Service in September 2023 for high-resolution aerial imagery creation and distribution through March 31, 2026. As a sub-recipient, NCWRPC performs transportation planning work funded through the Wisconsin Department of Transportation under Federal Highway Administration SPR (State Planning and Research) programs in 2024 and 2025. Activity has been sparse and irregular — two awards in 2021, two in 2023, one in 2024, two in 2025, and one in 2026 — with one award facing recompete completion in the next twenty-four months. NCWRPC's capability portfolio centers on regional economic development strategy, entrepreneurship-ecosystem planning, comprehensive geospatial data acquisition and orthophotography, and transportation planning coordination.