- FY2015 Budget for Micro
- Holiday Gift Guide!
- Save the Date for the MicroLenders Forum on January 15, 2015 in San Francisco
- The Goodies – This week’s highlight includes the the 2013 Micro Census that explains the landscape of the micro sector.
FY2015 Budget for Micro
The numbers for the FY2015 budget are here and we’re smiling!
- SBA PRIME — $5 Million (42% increase over FY14)
- SBA Micro Lending — $25 Million (AEO recommended level)
- SBA Micro TA — $22.3 Million (12% increase over FY14)
- SBA WBC Program — $15 Million (7% increase over FY14)
- SBA SBDC Program — $115 Million (1% increase over FY14)
- SBA Boots 2 Business — $7.5 Million (7% increase over FY14)
- CDFI Fund — $230.5 Million (2% increase over FY14)
- USDA RBEG — $24 Million (same as FY14); however, no funding for RBOG
- USDA RMAP — $ 0 **Please note: the bill does not include funding for the RMAP program, however, the RMAP program receives $3 Million in mandatory funding annually through FY2018.
Thanks to the team at Madison Services Group and our advocacy efforts! All our hard work has paid off. Claudia’s meeting with Rep. Andrew Crenshaw’s staff this spring helped to make the case for the increases in funding. This is especially true for the PRIME program, which received a higher percentage increase than anything else since the Recovery Act in 2009/2010. The WBC program received more funding than it is authorized to have. Our next advocacy effort in DC will be to bring this money to California!
Note that the budget still needs to be passed by the Senate, but we feel good about publicizing these numbers for our sector. If you’re interested in the details behind the budget approval process, read The Washington Post.
Holiday Gift Guide!
This holiday, consider spending most of your money on locally-owned independent businesses, especially those that CAMEO members help. A bunch of you have sent me links.
- Working Solutions has quite a few unique vendors in their Holiday Gift Guide.
- OBDC offers up a map of all of the small businesses that they’ve helped.
- The Pacific Coast Ventures 2014 Holiday Gift Guide has discounts on clothing and sourdough bread.
- La Cocina sells gift boxes of yummy treats from $35-100.
- Legal Services for Entrepreneurs (LSE), a project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, published a comprehensive holiday guide filled with caterers, gifts and other holiday needs.
- Opportunity Fund has their Opportunity Funded Business Directory. This year they featured “You Smell” soaps and Coolhaus pint of the month club.
- Women’s Economic Ventures (WEV) has put their gift guide on their Facebook page.
Send me your gift guides and I’ll publish them!
Check out these studies to make the case on why locally-owned businesses are the way to go for the holidays:
- Do Local Business Ownership and Size Matter for Local Economic Well-being?;
- Costs and benefits to cities of locally-owned businesses versus larger chain stores from Civic Economics; and
- Shop Local studies.
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 Kudos: SAFE-BIDCO has been selected to participate in the USDA Rural Development’s Rural Microenterprise Assistance Program (RMAP). The program allows SAFE-BIDCO to make up to a total of $400,000 worth of loans to small businesses in Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Mendocino, Sonoma, and Trinity Counties as well as offer significant additional business assistance. Congrats!
2013 Annual Census: We have crunched the numbers for 2013 and the landscape of the micro sector is a mixed bag. Lending increased in 2013 by 30% over 2012. Our members made 2,049 loans, for a total volume of $26 million, exceeding pre-recession lending for the first time. But as a group, we have served fewer clients and businesses each year since 2010 and have supported fewer employees each year.
Take Action: Our friends at California Reinvestment Coalition are supporting a proposed rule change to the Military Lending Act that caps interest rates at 36 percent for a wide range of high-cost loans made to active-duty service members. The DoD is hearing from lenders that want to continue targeting service members with triple digit interest loans, so they need to hear from consumer, community and military groups that enough is enough. Please join CRC and hundreds of allies across the country in urging the DoD to secure consumer protections for our nation’s active duty military service members.
Healthcare Webinars: The Small Business Administration and Small Business Majority are helping businesses navigate health care through the webinar series What the Healthcare Law Means For Your California Small Business . It’s every two weeks in English. The next one is on December 17, 2014 at 10:00am.
Award Nominations: National Small Business Week has been recognizing the special impact made by outstanding entrepreneurs and small business owners since 1963. During this week, the U.S. Small Business Administration honors small business owners and entrepreneurs for their outstanding achievements through various awards. SBA is currently seeking nominations from the public for exceptional entrepreneurs and those that champion them. The deadline is January 5, 2015.
Free Webinar: Cutting Edge Capital presents The Better Way to Crowdfund on January 14, 2015, 11:00am – 12:00pm PT. A Direct Public Offering (DPO) is a form of investment crowdfunding in which anyone can participate. DPOs do not need to wait for regulations under the JOBS Act—they are already legal. In this webinar you will learn about the crowdfunding tool that lets you raise investment capital from anyone and what are the three keys to a successful crowdfunding campaign.
For Your Clients: If you know of any business or entrepreneurial nonprofit that might be interested in raising money using a Direct Public Offering (this allows you to legally raise capital from both wealthy and non-wealthy investors and do public advertising), please let them know about Cutting Edge Capital’s DPO boot camp. The boot camp is virtual and can be done at your own pace at any location where you have access to a computer! It launches in late January.