MakeMyMove's Stake in Public Cash
Indiana owns a piece of the remote-worker company. Cities then pay its fees. Vigo taxpayers still lack an independent count of who moved and what each stay cost.
Written by Indiana · District 8November 13, 2026Terre Haute's latest MakeMyMove round is written down in black and white on the Indiana Economic Development Corporation's transparency portal. Project 427156 awards the city a $175,000 state grant from the Indiana Promotion Fund. The portal shows the full amount paid. Mayor Brandon Sakbun signed the agreement on Nov. 13, 2024. A no-cost amendment later stretched the term through May 30, 2026.
The city's own books add another line. City Council Appropriation 11 of 2025 moved $87,500 from the EDIT local income-tax account into a MAKE MY MOVE account. Exhibit A to the grant agreement sets a total program of $350,000: $175,000 from the state and $175,000 from the community, with a goal of 26 households. Of that budget, $195,000 is reserved for mover stipends at $7,500 per household. Program management takes $5,238. Marketing takes $111,998. Platform, products and services take $37,764. Roughly $155,000 of the $350,000 never reaches a relocating family. It pays for the campaign and the platform that runs it.
The payment schedule in the grant is as revealing as the budget. The first $87,500 of state money went out on execution. The second $87,500 became payable when the city invoiced confirmation that 13 individuals had relocated. Full payment on the portal suggests that tranche cleared. It does not publish who verified those addresses, how long those households stayed, or whether the 26-household goal was met. The agreement also requires monthly progress reports to the IEDC. Those reports are not posted for the public.
That gap matters more once the state's other stake in MakeMyMove is on the table. In January 2023, IEDC and TMAP, LLC, doing business as MakeMyMove, executed a Twenty-First Century Research and Technology Fund award agreement. The state disbursed $249,995.95 for 52,089 Series Seed II Preferred Units issued to Indiana 21st Century Fund, L.P. The company received working capital. The state received an equity position. Across the same portal file set, community-facing MakeMyMove grants run to roughly $3.5 million contracted and about $2.5 million paid, with awards ranging from about $63,500 in Plainfield to $660,000 for the Northeast Indiana Regional Development Authority. Those grants help communities buy the company's marketing and platform services. Indiana is an investor in the firm and a funder of the local programs that pay the firm. That is a double dip on the same economic-development theory, and it belongs in any honest debate over the program.
The company and its partners have a case worth hearing. Inside INdiana Business reported on May 29, 2026, that MakeMyMove claimed more than 1,000 relocated households in Indiana since 2021, more than 2,380 new residents, $14.4 million invested, and estimated tax and local-activity figures in the tens and hundreds of millions. An earlier Terre Haute round, covered by the same outlet on Sept. 22, 2023, reported 1,700 applicants, 24 who decided to move, and 12 who completed the relocation, with an average household salary of about $88,000. The economic-impact numbers in that coverage came through a model associated with the Indiana University Public Policy Institute and used by MakeMyMove. Those claims may describe real families who put down roots. They are still the vendor's scoreboard, not an independent audit of Terre Haute's 2024–26 count.
The eligibility rules make the priorities plain. MakeMyMove's Terre Haute listing recruits remote workers who currently live outside Indiana. Local families already here do not qualify for the $7,500 stipend line. Vigo County has its own housing costs, wage pressures and young people who leave for work elsewhere. A majority of constituents might reasonably ask why scarce tax dollars chase out-of-state resumes before they shore up the people already on the property-tax roll. In my view, that preference fits a broader pattern in which Republican officeholders and economic-development shops lean toward the donor class's idea of "talent" and away from the working families who vote them in. The contracts do not prove bad faith. They do show where the money goes.
The right questions for City Hall and the IEDC are practical. What is the cost per verified household-year once marketing and platform fees are counted? Who checked the addresses and the length of stay for the 13 individuals that unlocked the second state payment? Did Terre Haute reach the 26-household goal written into Exhibit A? When will the monthly progress reports become public? Mayor Brandon Sakbun's office did not respond by deadline to those questions, emailed Nov. 9. An emailed request to the IEDC's press address could not be delivered. Until those answers appear on the record, Hoosiers are asked to trust a program that the state both owns a piece of and helps fund through local grants.
A town that wants new neighbors can still welcome them. A republic that wants trust has to show its work. You can demand the addresses, the stay lengths and the audited cost without scorning anyone who moved here in good faith. Public money spent in your name should answer to you.
Written by a Hoosier First contributor and reviewed by our editors before publishing, under our editorial standards.