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March = CAMEO Cutting Edge Training and Women’s History

  • CAMEO’s Cutting Edge Training
  • Celebrate Women’s History Month – Support We Decide 2106
  • The Goodies – This week’s highlight is for you to visit your legislators in the district from March 18-25 to educate them on the pitfalls for small businesses in using online alternative lenders. Scroll down for resources!

CAMEO’s Cutting Edge Training

We have several trainings coming up this month!

  • March 7 – Peer call re: “Business Model Canvas”
  • March 16 – DIY Economy: Tools to Help Local, Small Businesses Access Capital
  • March 22 – Branding with 99 Designs, a train-the-trainer webinar
  • March 28 – Peer Call re: “Building a Value Proposition”

Register for the first two below and stay tuned for registration information for the ones toward the end of the month.

Peer call re: “Business Model Canvas”

OFN is offering a webinar series focused on growth and innovation for small business lenders to help us understand and navigate through this new landscape. CAMEO will follow each session with dynamic peer group calls to digest and apply what was learned.

The first OFN webinar painted a powerful picture of the current small business lending landscape and how CDFIs can innovate to address these challenges and opportunities. The second webinar introduced the Business Model Canvas, an interactive tool to help you understand and map out your organization’s business model. You can download the webinars from the OFN Small Business Financing Program page.

As part of our MicroLending Academy, CAMEO will be holding peer calls a few days after each OFN webinar to discuss how best to apply the ideas presented in the webinar to your organization. Susan Brown will lead the calls.

Join us on March 7 at 3:00pm for a discussion on how to apply the Business Model Canvas to your organization plus any pointers on how CAMEO might facilitate this process.

For the full schedule of OFN webinars and peer calls, visit the Small Business Financing Webinar Series post on our website.

DIY Economy: Tools to Help Local, Small Businesses Access 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 0.10% 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 making 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?

Celebrate Women’s History Month

March is Women’s History Month – when the great contributions of women are celebrated. Women entrepreneurs now number 10 million! We love recognizing amazing women and their profound impact as innovators, inventors, industry disruptors, and more. Make sure that you recognize the women entrepreneurs in your life!

To celebrate we have good news from the federal government this week. First, the SBA expanded the industries in the Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract Program. After more than two decades, the program finally met its goal of 5% of federal contracts to women-owned firms! This achievement is due in no small part to the advocacy efforts of the small business community and especially women entrepreneurs. Ann Sullivan, our woman in DC, was quoted in The New York Times about the five year old rules that allow “agencies to set aside specific contracts for bidding only by companies owned by women.”

I think we can attribute the government meeting its goal directly to that being put in place. They weren’t going to meet it simply by wishing and hoping; there needed to be a program specifically designating some contracts.

We Decide 2016: 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.

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!

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

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!

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).

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. Early-bird registration rates are extended until March 8!

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.

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.

Webinar Resources: Access CFED’s Building Better Business Financial Capability Solutions webinar and/or download the slides. Download the Finding Common Threads brief to learn about the set of themes that define business owners; desires, values and behaviors discussed on the webinar.