To follow up on the on PRIME funding email I sent earlier this week: as of the sending of this email, we still have not heard from the Senate Appropriations Committee about their recommendations for PRIME.
In this week’s Must Know:
- September in Sacramento
- Member Content
- The Goodies: information on important opportunities like trainings, funding, scholarship programs. This week’s highlight is a free webinar offered by Friedman Associates: Estimating Supply and Demand for Microcredit in Your Community, September 21, 2011 at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET. Learn more and register.
September in Sacramento
This week CAMEO continued to rally support for our application for the Workforce Innovation Fund grant from the Department of Labor (yet to be announced.) Shufina and I met with Dennis Petrie, the deputy director of the Employment Development Department, and his staff. They were supportive and are looking for partners and collaborators. Everyone is interested in Micro Enterprise and entrepreneurship; EDD now knows that if they want to do something in our field, CAMEO represents the infrastructure that can make things happen.
Also, we sent letters of support for three bills that are sitting on Governor Brown’s desk.
- AB 29 will create the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.
- AB 624 will continue the California Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) Tax Credit and Certification Program and adds a California Organized Investment Network (COIN) Advisory Board
- AB 901 will expand the definition of financial institutions eligible to participate in the California Capital Access Program (CalCAP) to include small business financial development corporations and micro-business lenders and increases CalCAP reporting requirements. CAMEO provided the language to expand the definition of eligible entities.
Finally, I compiled a list of state and federal agencies that fund our field for your convenience.
Member Content
In CAMEO’s quest to strengthen our website content and provide more value added to our members, I request your help in developing content on several levels depending on your interest and availability.
With minimal effort you can forward me your press hits and your event notices.
If you’ve been featured in your local newspaper (or national outlet!), let me know and I will post it in our ‘CAMEO Members in the News’ section. I try to find most of the news, but an extra pair of eyes helps.
Another way to contribute is to send me your events notices to include in the CAMEO event calendar. I am on most of your email lists, but again, I do miss some things.
With a bit more effort you can forward me your success stories – you gather them anyway.
One of my passions is interviewing people about what they do, but it is impossible for me to cover so much ground all by my lonesome. So send me your success/impact stories. Our latest contribution, Taqueria Lidia (see photo above), comes from El Pajaro CDC. El Pajaro sent me a story and photos, I did some editing and fact checked it with El Pajaro and viola – a new post, and one that helps tell the story of our field.
For those of you who have an interest in developing rich content about micro, I want to recruit you.
First, the micro blog. Anyone who has tried to blog before knows that a successful blog needs tender loving care, i.e. frequent meaty postings. This is very hard to do by yourself. I’m looking for a few good micro experts or enthusiasts who would like to blog regularly, but not too often, say at least once every two weeks on anything micro relating to California – impact stories, policies, best practices, what not-to-do, breaking news, a new report, etc. Together we can establish a credible source of all things micro. Email me if you are interested.
Second, I’ve started a wikipage and you are invited to contribute. The wikipage is meant to be a library of information – data, reports, stats, news (of course you can re-purpose your wiki-info for use in a blog posting.) The more people contribute, the more useful it will be. Visit, poke around, suggest pages and of course request to join so that you can contribute.
The Goodies
New opportunities for trainings, conference information, funding, scholarships, and other information that have crossed our desks since the last Must Know. A running tab of current Goodies is on the CAMEO website.
Archived Webinar: The District Meeting How-to webinar is available to watch/listen at your convenience.
Free Webinar: Estimating Supply and Demand for Microcredit in Your Community by Friedman Associates on September 21, 2011 at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET. Learn more and register.
National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) Call for Proposals: Is your incubation program a model for industry best practices? Have you implemented new ideas and innovative techniques that are getting results? If so, consider submitting a proposal to present a session or workshop at NBIA’s 26th International Conference on Business Incubation, scheduled for May 6-9, 2012, in Atlanta. The deadline for all proposals is Wednesday, September 21. Learn more about submitting a proposal.
Free Webinar Training: The Center for Rural Entrepreneurship is offering a comprehensive and specialized training program for local economic developers and community leaders related to the knowledge and skills necessary to work effectively with area entrepreneurs. The training consists of seven hour-long webinars starting October 4. Learn more and register. The target audience for this training is local and regional leaders and economic developers who are exploring how to create a more effective entrepreneur-focused economic development program.
Federal Hearing on Capitol One-ING merger: The Federal Reserve has announced that public hearings will be held regarding the proposed merger between Capital One and ING Direct on October 5 at the Federal Reserve of San Francisco. Alan Fisher, Executive Director of the California Reinvestment Coalition says, “With zero branches and zero community investments, the proposed bank currently has no responsibilities to California’s communities. We need these hearings in order to obtain serious community commitments from the bank.”
For your clients: CARAT has funding from the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) to provide technology training to small businesses in California. This is stimulus project funding through the US Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA). CARAT is collaborating with partners in six regions in California to administer the targeted technology training program for free. Check out the schedules for September and October.