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Women’s History Month, CDFI Advocacy & DIY Capital

  • Celebrate Women’s History Month
  • Support CDFI Appropriations
  • CAMEO Training: DIY Capital
  • The Goodies – This week’s highlight is the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference (16NTC) in San Jose, March 23 – 25. Over 2,000 non-profit professionals will gather to share ideas, tactics, and strategies on using tech. CAMEO offers professional development stipends.

Celebrate Women’s History Month

Share this fact:

Read Claudia’s post Invest in Women Business Ownership for a Robust Economy on the ASBC website or in Huffington Post.

Engage: It’s super important to make our voice heard! CAMEO has joined Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) for their campaign – WE Decide 2016 – to engage women in business in the 2016 election. WE Decide 2016 is a nonpartisan, no cost collaboration with a focus on education and engagement. WE Decide 2016 will publish a Women in Business Priorities report prior to the national conventions to encourage political parties and their candidates to prioritize and discuss issues of significance to women entrepreneurs. Please take a moment to sign up your organization to become a WE Decide 2016 Supporter and pass on the invitation to your women clients.

Support CDFI Appropriations

President Obama has released his proposed FY2017 budget. He’s got $249.5 mm for the CDFI Fund. Now it’s time for Congress to get their budget done. Senator Menendez is leading a Senate sign-on letter in support of CDFI Fund appropriations.

Email Senator Boxer and Senator Feinstein the following:

Dear Senator [NAME]:

As the Appropriations Committee begins to work on the FY2017 Financial Services General Government Appropriations bill, I am writing to request that you join Senator Menendez in requesting $245.9 million for the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

You can find Senator’s Menendez’ request and a sign-on letter here: http://www.cdfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/FY-2017-CDFI-Fund-Dear-Colleague-and-Appropriations-Request-ltr.pdf

Email your sign-on letter to keith_roachford@menendez.senate.gov by March 15.

Many thanks for your support.
[YOUR NAME]

CAMEO Training: DIY Capital

Join CAMEO and CALED on March 16, 2016 at 01:00pm PT for DIY Economy: Tools to Help Local, Small Businesses Access Capital.

Despite their crucial role in the economy, only 0.1% of potential small and very small business borrowers are being served in California. Many polls find that small business owners believe the availability of credit is a problem. Larger banks are making fewer loans under $250,000, because they can do the same amount of work and earn more money with larger loans. Questions that we’ll address:

  • Why is capital access for small and very small businesses is a key component of the Do-It-Yourself economy (D-I-Y)?
  • Who is lending to small and very small businesses?
  • What are some tools that you can use to make sure that small businesses succeed and contribute to a sustainable local economy?

The Goodies

New opportunities for training, conference information, funding, scholarships, and other information that have crossed our desks since the last Must Know. I have posted a running tab of current Industry Goodies on the CAMEO website that lists items that were in past emails. Check it out to make sure you’re not missing anything, like grants whose deadlines are still alive!

Take Action: We’re asking all of our members to hold district meetings with their California state representatives during the March 18-25 break to inform California’s small business leaders and elected officials on what good capital looks like. We’ll follow up with meetings in Sacramento at our annual meeting. This is an issue they need to know about!

Member in the News: Cutting Edge Capital’s John Katovich has a new Huffington Post piece: Too many metrics, not enough relationships. Invest in Who You Know – Part 2: Spooky Reporting at a Distance.

Must Read: “Nonprofits are just so squishy on outcomes.” Or are we? And if you’re not subscribed to Vu’s Non Profit with Balls blog, you should be.

New Report: Seven Federal Reserve Banks (Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, and St. Louis) released Small Business Credit Survey: Report on Employer Firms. The three main findings: financing success improved in 2015; businesses most satisfied with small bank lending; and online lenders are popular—but they have lowest borrower satisfaction levels.

New Report: Civic Economics new report – Amazon and Empty Storefronts – looks at two broad classes of impact: Fiscal (relating to public revenue) and Land Use (relating to development patterns at the local level).

For Your Clients: The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) is hosting free webinars in March for businesses interested in applying for the California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC). GO-Biz will accept applications for the CCTC from March 7, 2016, through March 28, 2016. There will be at least $81 million in tax credits available for businesses that are expanding and adding jobs in the state. Businesses of all sizes are encouraged to apply (including microbusinesses!) Since June 2014, GO-Biz has awarded $223 million in tax credits to 330 companies projected to create over 42,000 jobs and make $10.2 billion in investments in California.

Free Webinar: Join Credit Builders Alliance for Understanding online consumer credit resources: Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, Quizzle, and Credit.com on March 17 at 12:00noon PT /3:00pm ET . With so many credit education tools and resources available online, it can be difficult for credit building practitioners and the consumers you work with to determine what information is useful and how it can be best used for credit coaching and credit building purposes. To provide clarity, CBA is convening industry experts to examine 4 prominent websites that provide access to consumer credit report & score information.

Non-Profit Technology Conference: If you’re interested in learning about how you and your organization can stay on top of technology trends – not to mention learn best practices, and get the support you need to use technology in a way that will truly fulfill your mission – then have a staff member or two attend the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference (16NTC). This year it’s in San Jose, California from March 23 – 25. Over 2,000 non-profit professionals will gather to share ideas, tactics, and strategies on using tech – in your communications efforts, as well as your programming. I’ll be going. If you have any questions about the conference, reach out to the organizers at NTEN: Nonprofit Technology Network. Don’t forget that we offer professional development assistance.

For Your Clients:Are you a small business, entrepreneur or scientist interested in technology-based agriculture innovations? Are you interested in collaborating with world class scientists? Then you should attend the webinar – Partnership Pays: Building a Relationship with ARS to Enhance Your USDA SBIR Proposal – on March 29, 2016 at 11:30am PT // 2:30pm ET.

CDFI Fund Applications: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) opened the fiscal year (FY) 2016 funding round for the Community Development Financial Institutions Program (CDFI Program) and Native American CDFI Assistance Program (NACA Program). Congress appropriated $153 million for CDFI Program awards; $22 million for Healthy Food Financing Initiative Financial Assistance (HFFI-FA) awards; and $15.5 million for NACA Program awards. Applications must be submitted by April 18, 2016.

AEO National Conference: Save the date May 18-20, 2016 in Washington, DC to celebrate 25 years! EconoCon25 gathers actors in the small business space who impact America’s smallest businesses and underserved entrepreneurs — lenders, nonprofit and for-profit service providers, advocates and policy makers, entrepreneurs, funders and investors — for meaningful dialogue about how to innovate faster, partner smarter, and execute better. Register today! Check out the EconoCon25 agenda.

CBA Symposium Awards: Submit an entry to win $500 for your organization plus one complementary registration fee to CBA’s Credit Building Symposium on July 14th! The awards are a one-page submission on Most Innovative Credit Building Product and Most Successful Credit Building Initiative. Email CBA for more information.

For Your Clients: The U.S. Small Business Administration has launched the registration for its 2016 Emerging Leaders executive-level training series for Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties. This is the fourth year the program has been held in Southern California and the second consecutive year that there will be two cohorts, one of only three SBA districts to do so. Sacramento area business owners may also participate. Rich Mostert of Valley Small Business Development Corporation will be teaching the class in Bakersfield.