Bloomington, Indiana — The Mill in Bloomington is preparing for the second cohort of its remote worker attraction program. According to The Mill, Bloomington Remote, which launched last June, has brought people from all over North America to Monroe County city and there are no plans to slow down.
“Our goal was to relocate 10 people in our first cohort. Within the first eight or nine months, we had hit that goal,” said Pat East, executive director of The Mill.
According to East, they had to do things a little differently than municipalities that are also looking to attract remote workers.
“We were able to get some funding, but a lot of programs offer $10,000 in cash for people to move to your city and we just didn’t have those resources available,” said East. “So, really what we decided to do was double down on the things that we knew we could compete really well on.”
Those who are selected to move to Bloomington receive three years of free coworking at The Mill. Individuals applying for Bloomington Remote must live outside of Indiana, have full-time remote employment, and must move within the year. The program also provides relocation support through Century 21 Scheetz, as well as concierge onboarding, network events, banking discounts, and other benefits with financial help from the city of Bloomington.
According to The Mill, 14 people were accepted through the program’s first cohort and come from a variety of places, including Mexico, California, and Washington D.C.
“The response has been pretty incredible,” said East. “We’ve relocated folks from The Washington Post, Under Armour. We’ve got a couple of startups that moved here. We have a YouTuber that focuses on historical clothing. We’ve got somebody from Google that relocated here. We’ve had a really, really great response overall.”
The Mill is currently planning for the second Bloomington Remote cohort, which looks to relocate 20 remote workers, and has already received one commitment from a PETA employee in Virginia, East said.
“We want to continue finding the right types of people. So, the folks that we have are super, super engaged. They really love being a board observer on a nonprofit that helps them get plugged into the community very quickly. We want to recruit all of these new folks from lots of different states, lots of countries, different walks of life to Bloomington.”
