Photo courtesy of the Warren County Chamber of Business and Industry Pictured are Lisa Hagberg and Ben Kafferlin, right, and Erin Willman and Bob Willman, left, receiving award funding Thursday as part of a BIG IDEA contest held at Pitt-Bradford.

A couple Warren County ‘Big Ideas’ scored, well, big this week.

Two county businesses — Kafferlin Strategies and White Cane Coffee — left Thursday’s BIG IDEA contest held at Pitt-Bradford with $25,000 and $15,000 respectively.

Eight finalists presented their ideas to a panel of judges as part of the effort.

The first prize went to Ben Kafferlin and Lisa Hagberg for their CivilLink proposal, a software package for local government.

“We come from county and municipal government and we’ve built a team of management consultants at Kafferlin Strategies,” Kafferlin explained in a video on the project. “What we aim to do is build a process management system for local government. We’re calling that CiviLink.

“What we seek to do is to get operational effectiveness, efficiency and transparency into local government.”

“We do not believe that inefficiency and ineffectiveness need to be characteristics of local government,” Hagberg added.

White Cane Coffee’s proposal is for a sustainable, multi-use pod-based drink brewing system.

“Our company’s focus is ways of making products more accessible to the blind and disabled communities,” Bob Willman explained. “We’re always thinking of ways to make things better.”

The product would address both cost and environmental issues.

“Our goal was to come up with a single-use, compostable pod that would solve both of these problems,” he said.

The contest was presented by Ben Franklin Technology Partners, a firm that has partnered with the state Department of Community and Economic Development to provide funding and business expertise to companies, and the PA Wilds Center for Entrepreneurship. It was funded by $50,000 from the Appalachian Regional Commission.

The competition targeted Cameron, Elk, Forest, McKean and Warren counties.