New Address: Two Embarcadero Center, 8th floor, San Francisco, CA 94111     

Hello to 2017! Self-employment Directions from the USDOL!

  • Happy New Year! CAMEO in 2017
  • Gift from US DOL!
  • The Goodies – This week’s highlight is The High Road Workplace on January 12, 2017, from 5:30-7:45pm at New Resource Bank, 255 California Street, Suite 600, San Francisco. Join ASBC and CAMEO for an in-depth discussion of the benefits and challenges of the High Road Workplace (invite your clients!).
  • Happy New Year! CAMEO in 2017

    We hope that you had a wonderful holiday and are ready to start the year. The CAMEO staff is off to a running start, that’s for sure. On Wednesday, we hosted The New Era Workforce webinar in conjunction with CALED. Thanks to Marysol McGee from the Federal Reserve Board and Natalie Foster, a New America Fellow also working with the Aspen Institute for laying out the demographics, as well as the solutions and policies that might best support this extremely fast-growing independent, self-employed sector. You can listen to the webinar and download the slides. So what else do we have planned in the next few weeks?
    • We’re in the midst of our membership drive. Renew your membership/join us and gift your organization a year of training, advocacy and connections.
    • On January 18, we are co-hosting a symposium with Intuit – Self-Employed Entrepreneurs: The New Era Workforce – that will dive deeper into the solutions that will help entrepreneurs thrive. (We’re at capacity! We promise a comprehensive report on what happened.)
    • After marching in the Women’s March, Claudia will be in DC on January 23 to meet with legislators to begin creating support for our legislative agenda. Think an ambitious 5x-funding for women’s entrepreneurship, support for CDFI’s and rural development, and self-employment.
    • On January 27,we’re hosting a reception for California women veterans attending the VWISE event in Phoenix for women veterans.
    • February 1 is our Microlenders Forum at the Federal Reserve Board of San Francisco.
    That doesn’t mean we’re taking the rest of the year off. We’re scheduling a Go-To-Market program in Fresno in April. Mark your calendar for the annual member meeting on June 7 in Sacramento. Other CAMEO programs include our important advocacy work in Sacramento and DC, an Etsy training in the Central Valley, new microlending skills training, and regional meetings. Get ready for a great year!

    Gift from US DOL!

    In case you missed it, right before we went on vacation for the end of the year holidays, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) have us something we’ve wanted for a long time – performance measures for the self-employed entrepreneurs so that entrepreneurship training is covered! This is a huge win for us as we’ve been working on this issue for years. DOL issued “Training and Employment Guidance Letter No. 10-16“. In the letter, DOL makes clear that entrepreneurship training is covered by these programs and funding and can be included in performance metrics through “supplemental wage data.” A list of DOL’s examples of supplemental wage information will be released in January 2017, but states can come up with their own measures. Examples that we know of include Q2, Q4, and median income. Once we analyze DOL’s suggested supplemental wage information and get a copy of the Local Performance Report template later this month, we’ll form a strategy to approach workforce boards with this guidance to integrate entrepreneurial training into the workforce system in a comprehensive manner. Let us know if you want to work on this issue with us. Email Claudia.

    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 In the News: Our colleagues at American Sustainable Business Council have a piece in The Hill about how Linda McMahon can revitalize small business if she is confirmed as the new administrator of the U.S. SBA. Take Action: Our colleagues at CFED are gearing up to support low- and moderate-income families at the federal level. Get involved in on or all of their campaigns: affordable homeownership, consumer protections, working families and setting a fair tax code. Train the Trainer: If you want to help your clients reduce their operating cost, join AEO on January 9, 2017 at 11:00am PST // 2:00pm EST. Business owners don’t know if they are getting the best deal from their credit card processors. As part of AEO’s Re-Imagine Technical Assistance (RTA) initiative, AEO is conducting a pilot to demonstrate the value of small business owners utilizing a payments processing assessment tool like Heropay. For Your Clients, Webinars: Small Business Majority and the U.S. SBA host California Workplace Benefits Webinar: Healthy Employees, Healthy Bottom Line. This webinar series during open enrollment discusses workforce and healthcare laws. They’ll also discuss programs that offer a competitive advantage for small businesses and help them retain and attract talented employees. Register for the webinars at 11:00am on January 10, 2017, and January 24, 2017. For Your Clients: The future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the health insurance marketplaces is an unknown. In California, a lot of confusion and misinformation about what this means for the state’s health insurance marketplace, Covered California, and enrollment options for 2017 is floating around. Small Business Majority sets the record straight on healthcare in California with a few key points to keep in mind. In a nutshell, if you signed up for 2017, you’re covered for 2017. CAMEO Co-hosted Event: Along with the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC), CAMEO is co-hosting The High Road Workplace on January 12, 2017, from 5:30-7:45pm at New Resource Bank, 255 California Street, Suite 600, San Francisco. Join us for an in-depth discussion of the benefits and challenges of the High Road Workplace: What does it take? What is the payoff? And what incentives can accelerate this crucial transformation of the future of work? For Your Clients: Participate in LendingTree’s $50,000 Small Business Grant Contest. Eligible entries will be judged by a panel of Sponsor executives or judges who will select the winners on the basis of originality and creativity. For more information and eligibility requirements click on the link. The deadline is January 13, 2017. For Your Clients: Go-Biz’s California Competes Tax Credit online application is now open until January 23, 2017. Yes, very small businesses can apply for the available $100 million in credits. Women’s Business Center Comments: The US SBA is seeking comments on this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding the Women’s Business Center (WBC) Program. The deadline for comments is January 23, 2017. Funding Opportunity: The Local Crowd pleased to announce an opportunity for up to 10 U.S. rural communities to become Demonstration Sites that use crowdfunding as an economic development tool. This will be the fourth and final RFP to become a demonstration site. Local economic development organizations are invited to respond to the Request For Proposals. These responders may be local or regional economic development groups, SBDCs, chambers of commerce, Main Street programs or other organizations. Deadline to respond is February 1, 2017. CDFI Conference: The CDFI Coalition will hold its 2017 Institute on February 28 and March 1 at the Capital Hilton Hotel, 1001 16th Street NW, Washington, D.C. The agenda will include speakers and topics of interest and importance to the CDFI Industry. Panelists will include federal agency leaders and industry experts with topics ranging from the 115th Congress and Trump Administration priorities, to the CDFI Fund and other federal resources, as well as private sector sources of capital for CDFIs. Funding Opportunity: Opportunity Fund recently launched its Community Partner Program. The program can supplement the missions and programs of other non-profits by serving as a microloan program for those who do not have one and complementing the services of those who do. Partners receive several benefits, including an in-depth look at the credit and underwriting criteria and a 5% commission on every qualified referral booked for loans between $5,000 and $50,000. If you have questions or are interested, please contact Robert Zapata by email or phone 323.506.3529. For Your Clients: The U.S. SBA opened the third year of the InnovateHER: Innovating for Women Challenge (the Challenge), pursuant to the America Competes Act, for entrepreneurs to create a product or service that has a measurable impact on the lives of women and families, the potential for commercialization, and fills a need in the marketplace. Organizations that wish to host a local competition as part of the initial round of this Challenge must send a request to the SBA no later than March 10, 2017. (Click on first link in sentence and scroll half way down the page.) microTracker Relaunches: FIELD at the Aspen Institute is thrilled to announce the new microTracker.org, their nationwide database on US microenterprise development organizations. MicroTracker gives you the ability to explore, analyze, and compare data on microenterprise programs across the country. The new site is updated to give flexibility, better navigation, and more ability for downloading analysis.]]>