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Role of Banks in Funding Climate Change

California communities have been ravaged by fires, flooding, extreme heat and paralyzing spring snowstorms. Big changes in public policy and corporate conduct are needed to solve the crisis of climate change. This report analyzes the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a public-private initiative created in 2020 to help alleviate financial pressures businesses experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlights the unexpected impacts the loan program has had on climate change. This first-of-its-kind analysis looks at all bank financing of oil, gas and coal companies under the PPP.

California Competitiveness Report

CALIFORNIA IS A CROWN JEWEL FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND INVESTMENT

– The economy of California is the largest in the country, with a $3.598 trillion (GSP) as of 2022.
– It is the largest subnational economy in the world.
– If California were a sovereign nation, it would rank in terms of nominal GDP as the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany and ahead of India.

Women’s Small Business Ownership Report

Women represent more than half of the United States population and make significant contributions across all industries and sectors. Americans filed about 5.1 million business applications in 2022, nearly 14,000 a day, up from 3.5 million in 2019. That compares to just 29 percent of all business filings pre-pandemic. Women in particular have been the driving force behind America’s economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic, creating about half of new businesses for the third year in a row. Women of color, specifically Black women, have had a tremendous impact on the post-pandemic economy with the number of Black-women-owned employer businesses increasing to around 18 percent from 2017-2020, compared to a 9 percent increase in the number of women-owned businesses. According to an analysis produced by the Boston Consulting Group, if women participated equally to men as entrepreneurs, global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) could increase by approximately 3 to 6 percent, adding $2.5 to $5 trillion
to the global economy.

CA Small Business Owners Support Paid Leave Policies

As the California Legislature considers updating the state’s small business paid family leave and sick day policies, a new poll shows that small businesses owners strongly support expanding family leave protections and other benefits to their employees, including increasing the amount of paid sick days that employees can take.

Well-Being in Rural California 2023

Well-Being in Rural California 2023 paints a picture of well-being and access to opportunity across race, place, and gender in rural California today. Using the American Human Development Index (HDI), this report presents how residents in rural California are doing on three key dimensions of well-being—a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living. Broken down by race and ethnicity, by gender, and by census tract, the index shows how communities are faring relative to one another and to the state and country as a whole. The report found that stark variation exists by place and by demographic group—resulting in significant inequalities across rural areas.

State of Diverse Businesses in California

The California African American, Asian Pacific, and Hispanic Chambers of Commerce have partnered with Beacon Economics and the California Office of the Small Business Advocate to develop an annual report to share insights on the economic, fiscal, and social impact of the state’s diverse small business community.

Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs: Removing Barriers

The Kauffman Foundation continues to recognize, with urgency, the significance of the role new and existing businesses play in local, regional, and the national economy. This report continues our series of sharing the state of capital access for entrepreneurs highlighting the need for innovative products and models to improve capital delivery systems.

Economic Well-Being of Households 2022

The Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2022 report examines the financial lives of U.S. adults and their families. The report draws from the 10th annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, or SHED, which was conducted in October 2022. The report, downloadable data, data visualizations, and a video summarizing the survey’s findings are found here.

Lending to Entrepreneurs of Color: Strategies & Tactics

In this paper, we share lessons in six key areas related to microloan origination, including specific practices of CDFIs that are currently originating many hundreds or thousands of microloans annually. The findings are drawn from the members of BOI’s Microfinance Impact Collaborative (MIC), which has been convening and collaborating since 2015 and whose members collectively originated 11,978 loans totaling just under $310 million in 2022. This paper follows a prior one that described the critical role that microloans — loans less than $50,000 — play in meeting the needs of Black and Latinx borrowers and the challenges that CDFIs face in scaling microlending.

2023 Report on Employer Firms

Small business revenue, employment, and profitability each improved from 2021, but expectations worsened year-over-year. With the end of pandemic-related funding programs, the application rate for traditional financing rebounded to prepandemic levels.