Small Business Support
November 9, 2020
Combined with the drama of a pandemic, this season of holiday bazaars, craft shows, and open houses is the best time to support small businesses. The men and women who own your favorite shop or restaurant work tirelessly seven days a week. Despite their hard work, the Kauffman Foundation estimates that 25% of all small businesses have closed at least briefly because of COVID-19 since February 2020. This number is greater for the restaurant, hotel, and retail industries. To rebuild the small business segment, Bruce Katz outlines these five steps:
1. Acknowledge the COVID-19 crisis in the small business arena
2. Provide equal opportunities for entrepreneurs
3. Build a financial network that actually works for small businesses
4. Use public and private resources to grow minority and women owned businesses
5. Collect the data to recognize, measure, and advance public programs and policies at the local, state, and federal level.
For the full story from Kauffman Foundation: https://www.kauffman.org/currents/rebuilding-the-small-business-sector-bruce-katz/
Rethinking Small Business Support
Since March, Bruce Katz and the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University have been actively trying to help cities respond to what Bruce calls a massive collapse of small business. The government’s response focused on the businesses with several hundred employees with good relationships with banks and overlooked the Main Street businesses. Using Jane Jacob’s philosophy from fifty years ago that states small businesses are the life blood of cities; the country will have to restart and reimagine small business support once the pandemic is over.
What can we do right here in Grant County to support our entrepreneurial ecosystem and create innovative opportunities? Melissa Roberts from Kauffman Foundation suggests the following:
1- Understand the business continuum our community has including their funding needs.
2- Expand or launch a network of community banks who are willing to access capital for minorities and women.
3- Encourage collaboration between banks, economic development, realtors, landlords, government officials, and entrepreneur mentors.
4- Shop Local!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWR5Cel_GiQ
