CAMEO’s Annual Meeting is in Sacramento, June 6-7, 2012. Book your hotel room at the discount rate until May 15, 2012.
In this week’s Must Know:
- PRIME FY2012 Update
- Engage with CAMEO
- The Goodies: information on important opportunities like trainings, funding, scholarship programs. This week’s highlight is Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. A bunch of you are hiring!
PRIME FY2012 Update (and budget action)
Some of you have asked about the release of FY2012 PRIME funds, so we asked. Disclaimer: nothing is guaranteed.
The SBA will analyze the 2nd quarter reports, which are due at the end of this month. Based on performance, they’ll figure out how many option year grants they will fund and determine if there is money available for new grantees (not likely). They hope to have the letters out by the end of June so that budgets can be completed and the grants can get out.
If you’re concerned about the PRIME program and/or any of the funding for micro, make your case to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government (House FSGG), the committee that decides on funding for the SBA and CDFI’s. Sample letters and contact information are in last week’s Must Know.
CAMEO will make the case to the California delegation while we’re back at the AEO conference next week. And since we’re gone, the Must Know will take a week’s vacation.
Engage with CAMEO
As the hub of micro in California, CAMEO serves as a way for us all to network. And in today’s parlance, that means online. We are beefing up our presence.
A couple of weeks ago I started a LinkedIn group only for CAMEO members: This group is open only to CAMEO members as a place to have a discussion about best practices, solutions to problems, pros and cons of different software, sharing research, programmatic questions, etc. Any staff member from any member organization will be able to join. Please join and post a discussion topic or participate in someone else’s (like my recent one about cashmobs for National Small Business Week.)
One of CAMEO’s activities is to raise public awareness about the Micro sector. But we can’t do it without your help. We need you to follow our tweets – @HeidiMicro and like us on Facebook and THEN ask your friends to do the same. People who are passionate about what they do can engage others. And stay tuned for our Causes.com campaign – it’s a great tool for engagement.
The Goodies
New opportunities for trainings, 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 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!
Job Opportunities: Check out our jobs page as I’ve added a few in the last couple weeks, e.g. The Aspen Institute/FIELD, Opening Doors, Renaissance Center and Working Solutions have new openings.
Archived Webinar: CAMEO and Aspen recently co-hosted a webinar on the benefits of MicroTracker. We’re happy to make it available. MicroTracker is a great tool to measure impacts for your organization and the field.
Archived Webinar: Last week AEO hosted “Community Reinvestment Act: What’s in it for you?” If you were unable to attend you can see the presentation and/or listen to a recording of the session.
Free Webinars: The Irvine Micropreneur Program hosts a free webinar every Thursday from 12:00-1:00p.m. on business topics of interest to small business. Find out more!
For Your Clients (in SoCal – LA, Orange, Ventura and Riverside Counties): Count Me In (a Friend of CAMEO) hosts Urban Rebound Los Angeles Conference and Competition on May 10 and 11, 2012 at the Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Boulevard, Los Angeles. You can register (only $49) for the conference and/or send to your clients – it’s a great opportunity. Find out about the pre-conference pitch parties so your clients can practice pitching their business (say that five times fast.)
Grant Opportunity: For Fiscal Year (FY) 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Community and Economic Development program, administered by the Office of Community Services (OCS) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), will provide approximately $27 million in grants ($800,000 maximum per project) to Community Development Corporations (CDCs) for projects designed to address the economic needs of low-income individuals and families through the creation of employment and business opportunities.Applications for 2012 CED funding are due on June 5, 2012. Learn more and apply.