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Targeting Customers Successfully Webinar; WOVEN Update

Professional Development: Targeting More Customers Successfully

Join the Marketing and Outreach Webinar on Wednesday, July 20, 2016 at 3:00pm to find out how to target your customers successfully.

Susan and Heidi are pooling their expertise!

We’ll focus on identifying customer segments, crafting key messages, building a sales culture and matching the best marketing channels to your customers. It will be a hands-on webinar, where we will give you a framework to sketch out your responses to each of these marketing elements. We’ll leave time for discussion for a peer exchange of ideas. You will come away from this webinar with tools and some content to take to your team for a fuller discussion.

Whether you are looking at increasing loan volume or coaching clients, this webinar will help give you fresh ideas and give you input from your peers.

WOVEN Continuing Community Continues

After two large one-day events in Southern California, we’re thrilled to report that continuing education for women veterans is underway. Los Angeles and San Diego have held their first series of classes and are gearing up for more, with the Inland Empire jumping in!

Los Angeles

Rise Financial Pathways in Los Angeles has a long-term commitment to serve veterans. Three people from their first class are now working on their businesses in the RISE facility. Microloans will be available to everyone that completes the 4-6 week training and follow-up sessions, compiles their business plan, and applies. Forescee Hogan-Rowles, President and CEO of Rise, recently announced a new grant from Bank of America to support their WOVEN work. They are working on scheduling their next WOVEN LA business plan classes. Download a WOVEN LA Flyer. You can also RSVP to attend an orientation on July 14 at 5:30pm.

San Diego

The San Diego Small Business Development Center convened a small group of women veterans in April and May that included: an e-commerce jewelry business, a breast feeding consultant, a body butter business (say that three times fast!), and a consulting business. For their next class, they are expanding their syllabus and beefing up their program to make it a richer experience for participants. Register for WOVEN San Diego starts on July 27 at the San Diego SBDC. Download a WOVEN San Diego Flyer .

Inland Empire

And last, but definitely not least! The Inland Empire Women’s Business Center hosts it’s first workshop with the amazing Eldona Lewis Fernandez on August 25-26. Think Like A Negotiator is a highly-charged, content-packed presentation in which Eldonna shows you how to find more power, negotiate better deals and create win-win results. You will be energized, empowered and educated to be a better negotiator and understand the art and language of negotiation.

If you know other women veterans who hail from elsewhere, contact The Jonas Project. They can refer you to the appropriate resources.

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!

Advocacy Win: The House passed the FY17 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which met or exceeded CAMEO’s requests for many of the entrepreneurial development programs at the Small Business Administration and the Department of Treasury. Next step, Senate approval and then reconciliation. See the June 23rd Must Know for funding levels.

For Your Clients: The National Women’s Business Council has a resource platform for women-owned businesses – The Grow Her Business: A Resource from Start-up to Scale-up. Grow Her Business is a searchable repository of nearly 200 premiere, growth-oriented programs. This platform will serve as a resource of valuable information and guidance for women entrepreneurs seeking to grow and scale their businesses.

Free Webinar: California Pollution Control Financing Authority (CPCFA) will hold a stakeholder meeting today July 14, 2016 from 1:00-3:00 PM PDT on proposed regulations for the California Americans with Disabilities Act Small Business Capital Access Loan Program (CalCAP/ADA). The Program will assist California small businesses comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Free Webinar: CFED, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Citi Foundation just released What It’s Worth: Strengthening the Financial Future of Families, Communities and the Nation, a book that could help you build bridges to new partners and strengthen your relationships with longstanding allies. The also have developed the “Book Club in a Box,” a set of materials designed to help you identify opportunities to get the most mileage out of What It’s Worth. Join them on Tuesday, July 19 from 12-1 pm PDT for an online conversation about the new “Book Club in a Box” and other opportunities to spread the message of financial health and well-being in your community.

Support Local Businesses: On July 20, if you shop at local Northern California Whole Foods Markets, 5% of your purchase will fund the Local Producer Grant Program, a Whole Foods-Working Solutions collaboration.

For Your Clients: Small Business Majority is hosting Access to Capital 101: Funding Options to Start and Grow Your Business every Wednesday, the next ones are July 20 and 27. They present an overview of alternative lending options including community development financial institutions, SBA’s loan guarantee program and reputable online options, key questions to consider when seeking funding, the Small Business Borrowers’ Bill of Rights and helpful tools and resources.

Professional Development Opportunity: You’re invited to join the CFED Assets & Opportunity Network and Center for Financial Security for a new four-part virtual Listening & Learning Series on Financial Coaching & Counseling. They are on the following Wednesdays from 12:-1:30pm PDT: August 10, and September 14. The A&O Network has also released Financial Coaching Census.

Funding Opportunity: Similar to the CDFI Fund’s Innovation Challenge last year, the Fund is holding a competition for CDFIs to encourage new ideas on how to increase CDFI investment and access to capital in underserved rural communities. The Fund will award up to $1 million for FY16 through the competition. FY 2016 Prize Competition submissions are due by July 29, 2016.

Nonprofit Taxes Webinar: The California Board of Equalization is offering free nonprofit seminars and workshops discuss tax laws, exemptions, and reporting requirements as they apply to non-profit and exempt organizations during the month of August in Perris, Oakland, Apple Valley, Fullerton, and Chula Vista.

For Your Clients: Fund and Fuel Your Dreams is a 2-day event on September 8-9 where you will get hands-on, expert training on how to raise money for your business. You will leave with a step-by-step plan and resources to take the plan forward. It is also a place to connect with like-minded mission-driven, heart centered women entrepreneurs in a supportive fun environment!

PayDay Lending Rules: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has proposed a rule aimed at reshaping the market for payday loans and other short-term credit. The proposal would require lenders to ensure that the consumer has the ability to repay the loan, provide notice that the lender is withdrawing funds from the consumer’s account and cease automatic withdraws if the consumer’s account is overdrawn. Comments on this proposal are due September 14, 2016.

New Report: Opportunity Fund released a very important research report, “Unaffordable and Unsustainable: The New Business Lending on Main Street.” Until now, we have been relying on stories to explain what’s happening with online lending. Now we’ve got some data on the loans and cash advances being offered to small businesses by short-term, high-cost alternative lenders. Cliff notes on findings: 94% interest rates; average payment is 1.78x income -YIKES.

For Your Client: OFN has a new small business borrower education platform – Venturize.

FIELD’s EntrepreneurTracker: FIELD worked with 19 microenterprise organizations in 2015 to collect data on the outcomes of 1,086 clients they had served in 2014. Each dollar spent on program costs generated between $8.96 and $9.45 in benefits. Learn more about EntrepreneurTracker.

Take Action: If there’s ever a time in politics that really needs a woman’s voice, that time is now. CAMEO has joined Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) for their campaign – WE Decide 2016 – to engage women in business in the 2016 election. This week’s poll is on capital access. Women receive only 4% of loans, yet represent 30% of all small businesses! Check out the video.

Dan Beam’s Report: The 2016 CAMEO Member Meeting Report by Dan Beam is a Must Read. CAMEO is ready for a whole new stage of evolution. Ushering in a new economic era carries both challenges and opportunity for CAMEO and its member organizations. Find out what’s shifting in the world today, and how CAMEO – and you!- can engage with the changes. We’d love your feedback from the Annual Meeting, the roles for CAMEO, and this report.

New DIY Guide: BALLE has a new field guide, The Future of Health is Local that gives health care providers actionable tools and examples on how to align the non-clinical assets of their organizations – such as procurement, employment, and investment – with local economic development strategies to improve human health and revitalize local communities.

New Report: “The State of Small Business in America” was issued by Babson College this month.