Happy Women’s History Month! MicroLending Essentials in the Bay

In this Must Know…

  • Happy Women’s History Month!
  • Microlending Essentials Comes to the Bay Area
  • SBA Reporting Penalties Updated
  • Take this simple two-question survey on social media channels you use.
  • The Goodies – This week’s highlight is that AEO released their agenda for Moving Main Street Forward. It is the must-attend event for professionals providing capital, technical assistance and other forms of trusted guidance to Main Street and microbusiness owners. See you in Detroit, Michigan, April 30 to May 2, 2018.

Happy Women’s History Month!

Let’s celebrate Women’s History Month (March) by celebrating women’s entrepreneurship and women in microbusiness by calling out the great work our members are doing to help women-owned businesses thrive.

In response to the Southern California fires, WEV has been hosting Small Business Recovery Workshops to support the vitality of small businesses in their community. If businesses were directly (physical damage) or indirectly (financial losses) affected by the Thomas fire or mudslides, they have local resources available, including free consulting, business courses, emergency loans, and long-term low-interest loans.

From March 5-11, 2018, La Cocina organized a Week of Women In Food, a 7-day dining experience of inspiring meals celebrating the voices, talent and food of nine La Cocina chefs from across the Bay Area (including Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement in photo). Their restaurants are the manifestations of dreams and their food, the flavors of lives lived.

Join the CDFI Women’s Network (CWN) on the CDFI Connect Community! Login and navigate to the all communities page, find the CDFI Women’s Network community and click the green join button in the upper right corner. For assistance, please email community@ofn.org. CWN is an independent, women-led, volunteer organization dedicated to promoting the advancement of women who work for CDFIs or for organizations that support the Community Development Finance industry.

And because good reports always help us with making the case, my gift to you is a new report.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship, released a report titled: “Tackling the Gender Gap: What Women Entrepreneurs Need to Thrive.” This timely study draws on interviews with 14 female entrepreneurs, who detail the obstacles they faced and how they overcame them, to highlight current initiatives and provide recommendations to eliminate the unique barriers confronting women-owned small businesses. Some of those barriers include:

  • Role Models and Mentors: Shaping the image of entrepreneurship and defining careers
  • The Gender Pay Gap: A lifelong hurdle for aspiring female entrepreneurs
  • Unequal Access to Financial Capital

The report argues that not taking full advantage of women entrepreneurs is a huge missed economic opportunity. Some of the promising ways forward include: crowdfunding, incubators and accelerators and strengthening the local entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Microlending Essentials Comes to the Bay Area

Participants so enjoyed our first MicroLending Essentials, that we decided to hold it again, this time in the Bay Area. Join us for MicroLending Essentials on April 16-17, 2018 at the SBA offices in San Francisco. Sign up before March 23 to take advantage of the early bird rate of $350 for members; $550 for non-members. Prices go up by $100 on after that, so register now!

CAMEO microlenders often ask us where they can send staff for microloan underwriting training. When we looked around, we didn’t find any that had evolved with current underwriting practices. So we designed a training ourselves.

What about business coaching organizations? Is one of your goals to help business owners access capital? Are too many of your referrals to lenders denied? Does your staff know how to talk to a lender in lenders’ terms? This training will help your staff think like a lender so that your referrals experience a higher rate of success. In turn, you will be able to train your business clients in the key components most likely to get them qualified for financing.

Register now to take advantage of the early bird pricing. Check out the agenda, topics that are covered, and what former participants had to say.

SBA Reporting Penalties Updated

The SBA updated their 2018 civil penalties for inflation, and to ensure that civil penalties remain an effective deterrent to misbehavior. The new penalties are as follows:

  • Any SBIC who fail to file SBA-mandated regular or special reports will see their penalty increase from $254 to $259 for each day the report is delinquent.
  • Any SBA Lender that fails to file SBA-mandated regular or special reports will see their penalty increase from $6,331 to $6,460 for each day the report is delinquent.
  • Any person who submits or directs the submission of false statements to the SBA, will see their penalty increase from $10,957 to $11,181 per false claim.

The effective date of this rule was February 21, 2018. I suggest playing by the rules on this one.

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!

Member Kudos: Opportunity Fund’s Eric Weaver won a Jefferson Award! Check out this great piece on the local CBS station.

Free Webinar: Join Prosperity Now on March 5, 2018 from 12:00-1:00pm PST for “Grassroots Empowerment: Introducing The African American Financial Capability Initiative“. The webinar will discuss a new initiative that adopts a community-centered, collaborative approach to fighting racial economic inequality.

Free Webinar: CalNonprofits hosts an online Annual Meeting for their members to report on their 2017 activities and forecast what’s ahead for California’s nonprofit community in 2018. Join them on March 6, 2018 at 2:00pm. If you’re not a member, you should be!

Free Webinar: Credit Builders Alliance hosts “All About the SBA Microloan Program” on March 15, 2016 at 11:00am PT. The SBA Microloan Program provides direct loans and grants to eligible non-profit microlenders so that they may provide microloans and business based training and technical assistance to start-up, newly established and growing small businesses. Learn about the program – eligibility requirements, the steps for becoming an intermediary, and the benefits of participating. A brief overview of the Community Advantage Program will also be provided.

State Survey: The California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) in partnership with the California Community Colleges Centers of Excellence for Labor Market Research (COE) is leading an effort to help education and workforce training providers create or improve programs to respond to Californiaโ€™s needs for a skilled cybersecurity workforce. Please join us in our effort to conduct a substantive cybersecurity labor market analysis for California by filling out the survey and passing it on.

For Your Farming Clients: Join California Farmlink for Growing Opportunity: Farm Finance Expo on March 28, 2018, 11:00am-5:00pm, in Sacramento. It’s one stop shopping for ag loans and financing resources. Meet Local Ag Lenders and Explore Financing Options. Learn How to Pitch a Farm Business for Financing. Manage Your Farm’s Finances (Instead of Your Finances Managing You).

Professional Conference (for you and your clients): The 8th annual La Cocina Conferencewill expand and force some intentional, exciting and considerate conversations around food as engines for economic development in our communities. On April 16-18, La Cocina invites chefs, placemakers, policy activists, writers, academics and consumers who believe that social justice must be a part of our dining culture to gather at the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio, San Francisco. Early bird tickets are available but there is a limited amount

Moving Main Street Forward: AEO’s microbusiness and microfinance conference is a must-attend event for professionals providing capital, technical assistance and other forms of trusted guidance to Main Street and microbusiness owners. The agenda will be packed with inspiring keynotes, thought-provoking plenaries and compelling breakout sessions designed to engage attendees in bold and provocative conversations on using inclusion, innovation and investment to move Main Streets across the country forward. See you in Detroit, Michigan, April 30 to May 2, 2018. Check out the newly released agenda!

For Your Clients: California State Treasurer John Chiang officially rolled out CBIG.ca.gov, the California Business Incentives Gateway. The online gateway connects business owners and entrepreneurs to incentives to help them grow and create jobs. The CBIG site makes it easy for businesses expanding or locating in California to find and apply for incentives as part of a strategic business plan.

For Your Clients: The U.S. SBA announced the launch of the 2018 Emerging Leaders initiative for executives of small businesses poised for growth in emerging markets. Local area recruitment for the 2018 training cycle is currently ongoing at designated SBA District Offices. Classes are scheduled to begin this spring with specific dates differing by location. Interested small business owners can learn more regarding eligibility, how to apply, and class schedules at the SBA’s Emerging Leaders website. In California, classes will be held in Fresno, Glendale, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.

New Report: The SBA issued “Financing Patterns and Credit Market Experiences: A Comparison by Race and Ethnicity for U.S. Employer Firms“. Hispanic and Black Americans are underrepresented in business ownership compared with their shares of the general population. Asians (73 percent) Hispanics (72 percent) and Blacks or African Americans (70 percent) rely on owner’s personal or family savings as a source of startup capital, while 65 percent of Whites relying on this source.

New Resource: The SBA’s SF District Office has launched a slack channel – The Business Support Network – that you are invited to join. Feel free to announce events and voice questions about where to send clients, how to handle specific types of businesses, find funding (for clients or yourselves), shape programming to serve business owners, and more. (Note: they had some technical difficulties, so if you signed up, you’ll need to sign up again.)