Micro Stands Up To Hate
Microlending Essentials, a CAMEO Training
And…Action! – Call Our Senators!
The Goodies – This week’s highlight is
Be Counted! Go to microTracker! The deadline is August 31, 2017.
CAMEO in the News: CAMEO’s support of the Small Business Borrower’s Bill of Rights was featured on their blog.
Micro Stands Up To Hate
Last week, CEOs of large corporations resigned from three of the President’s advisory council – ultimately disbanding them – because of the way that he ‘handled’ the bigotry on display in Charlottesville. You don’t have to be a big CEO to fight, though – go local! Local small and micro businesses can also fight racism and hate groups. So what can your clients and community do?
Shop Local and support the diversity of small business. If you’re in the Bay Area this month, you can celebrate National Black Business Month by visiting
Bay Area Organization of Black Owned Businesses to find black-owned businesses that you can patronize. If you live in other areas, check with the local Black Chamber. Patronize immigrant-owned businesses.
California has the highest percentage of jobs created by immigrant-owned businesses per total jobs created.
Join Main Street Alliance’s
Hate Has No Biz Here campaign. They started it in response to the President’s proposed travel ban on Muslims, but the campaign has taken on new relevance and immediacy in light of current events. Download their graphics and let your clients know about the campaign.
Read Rani Croager gives some other ideas in her blog post –
Fighting Hate Through Business. Rani is the co-founder of Uptima Bootcamp, a CAMEO member.
And for general resources refer to Southern Poverty Law Center’s
Ten Ways to Fight Hate and suggestions from PolicyLink’s Angela Glover Blackwell and Michael McAfee on how
white people can be allies in the fight against hate.
Microlending Essentials, a CAMEO Training
Join us for
MicroLending Essentials on November 7-9, 2017 in Los Angeles. Sign up before September 30 to take advantage of the early bird rate of $350 for members; $550 for non-members. Prices go up by $100 on October 1st, so buy now!
CAMEO members 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. Nor did we find one that helped loan officers understand how microlending differs from Community Advantage .
So we designed a training ourselves.
Susan Brown, CAMEO’s microlending specialist with over 25 years of experience in lending, developed a training for microlending credit analysis, with input from some of the strongest lenders in the field today.
The training will consist of a brief overview of Community Advantage and two and a half days on microlending credit analysis including discussion and application to several case studies. We are including a snippet of Community Advantage because seeing how and why microlending differs from underwriting large deals helps community lenders design programs appropriately.
Join us!
- Train staff on underwriting microloans
- Dialog with fellow lenders and compare notes, consider what
- Learn from successful microlenders, our guest speaker
- Gain understanding on why microloans and Community Advantage loans are different, and how to design an appropriate underwriting program for microloans.
Register now to take advantage of the early bird pricing.
Topics to be covered:
- Community Advantage Overview: Community Advantage Goals, Typical Business Characteristics, Key Indicators, Key Documents, Analyses Undertaken, Financial skills, understanding of the owner, Community Advantage Criteria
- Microlending Underwriting: Microlending Goals, Typical Business Characteristics, Financial skills, financial management level of the owner, Typical loan products, Expectations of client self-sufficiency in getting through loan process, Support documents, Underwriting Criteria, Underwriting Analysis, Credit Memo Template
- Case Studies: Participants will be given application, supporting documents and then be asked to fill write the credit memo and make a recommendation.
The training will take place at the Sheraton Grand, 711 South Hope Street, Los Angeles, CA 90017 in downtown Los Angeles. Hotel room information and other logistics forthcoming.
And…Action! – Call Our Senators!
Your voice is the most powerful tool we have to sway legislators to support small businesses and entrepreneurs in the districts and DC! Take advantage of the recess to engage with your representatives and tell our collective story.
For a recap of where we stand, see
last week’s Must Know.
Appropriations bills that support our programs (USDA, SBA, and CDFIs) are in the Senate. Senator Feinstein is a member of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee and understands the value of robust funding for the USDA’s Rural Business Program. Both of our Senators need to hear from you! Please call the Senators in their local office, urging them to support CAMEO’s FY2018 Appropriations requests. Below please find an update on the status of our appropriations requests so far, and information that can help you set up meetings with our Senators.
And a big thank you to board member Carmen Herrera-Mansir of El Pajaro CDC who used the resources above to meet with her congressman. She met with Congressman Panetta and he “was very interested in what I had to say and asked a few questions. I mentioned to him the need for the funding for TA aside from loan funds and gave him the reasons for this. Panetta totally agreed with that.” Carmen says “he is on our side and wants us to keep asking for this support.” I’d call that a win. We’ll be circling back with the congressman on rural development issues when the time is right.
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 News: Opportunity Fund has hired
Luz Urrutia as its new CEO.
August is National Black Business Month: The
Bay Area Organization of Black Owned Businesses lists black-owned businesses that you can support. Your spending choices are your power!
For Your Clients: Please pass this on to your clients – “As part of their vision to make quality jobs for working people the norm (and not the exception) our friends at Pacific Community Ventures are working to equip small business owners like you with practical tools and cost-effective resources to offer higher quality jobs in a way that balances your business’ financial and operational needs with doing right by your employees. In order to better create resources that meet your needs and serve as true actionable guides, they’re asking for your input in a 5 minute, anonymous survey. The goal is to better understand small businesses’ current employee benefit and engagement practices, pain points, and goals when it comes to providing quality jobs. Take the survey:
http://bit.ly/2sP5WmA.”
For Your Clients: The
U.S. Department of the Treasury will phase out the myRA program, the program is no longer accepting new enrollments. Savings in existing accounts remain safely in the investment issued by Treasury. Account holders have been notified; and the Treasury website has been updated. Account holders can continue to manage their accounts until further notice. We will be establishing regular communication with account holders to keep them informed of next steps and relevant deadlines through this transition. As the phase-out continues, the most up-to-date information and resources can be found at
myRA.gov.
Professional Development: Credit Builders Alliance is offering a one-day training that will help non-profit community-based organizations
enhance their understanding of credit building as an asset building strategy as well as best practices in credit education. The training will provide participants with an opportunity to learn from each other and credit experts and about the growing field of credit building including. The training is on
August 21, 2017 from 9:30am-5:00pm PDT at the National Asian American Coalition, 15 Southgate Avenue, Daly City, CA 94015.
Professional Conference: Register for the
OFN Conference in Washington, DC on
September 26-28, 2017.
Professional Development: The
Nonprofit Tech Roundup is in Portland this fall,
October 3-4. At the two-day conference, you’ll get the inspiration and practical tips you need on topics like websites and accessibility, data visualization, project management, email campaigns, and more.
Save the Date: OFN will hold the 2017 Western Regional Meeting Wednesday,
November 1 in San Francisco at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.]]>
