New Address: Two Embarcadero Center, 8th floor, San Francisco, CA 94111     

Food Glorious Food Biz Recap (MK)

Save the date for our Microlending Summit, January 9, 2013 in San Francisco.

Food Glorious Food Biz Recap

Food, Glorious Food Biz! was a great success with an excellent taste of speakers, content and inspiration. CAMEO member organizations and their clients were highly engaged and lots of business networking was sparked.

The thread that was woven throughout the day was relationships. Evan Kleiman (host of KCRW’s Good Food), our opening panel moderator and closing keynote, brought us full circle with a life lesson about connections. When the LA Food Policy Council was formed, all of the diverse stakeholders who should be in the room were – from the farmers to the policy makers. She felt the energy change. She became a believer in the power of collaboration, a power that can result in opportunity, positive change, and solutions to problems.

The relationship-connection theme was emphasized by our lunch keynote, Liza Braude-Glidden (Co-Founder and Creative Director of Beanfields Bean and Rice Chips). She started off…

Food is always a conversation. Entrepreneurship is always about relationships. We women tend to excel at both…. As women, we understand that connecting with more and more people in more and more beautiful ways is what makes life worth living. And it’s also how we get things done in business.

We’ve posted a full ‘soup to nuts’ recap of our fifth annual women’s entrepreneurship symposium on our website. Check out all of the presentations and resources.

Photo from left to right: Elizabeth Steward (Hub LA), Rachel Ostram (Neat-os), Michelle Waters (The Orange Line), Lisa Davidowitz (Beanfields) Liza Braude-Glidden (Beanfields).

Shop Local! Holiday Guide

I’m gathering a listing of your shop local guides for the 2013 Holiday Season. Send me yours and I’ll post it. Working Solutions sent us their ‘Gift Alley’ announcement for December 6, 2013, 11:00am-7:00pm at Crocker Galleria in SF, which also features entrepreneurs from Renaissance Center and Pacific Coast Ventures. And Urban Solutions sent us their Fillmore Holiday Marketplace on December 12, 2013, 4:00-9:00 pm at 1330 and 1307 Fillmore Street in SF.

shift your shopping localAlso, a few weeks ago, we launched a ‘Go Local’ op-ed campaign to draw attention to it. The Fresno Bee published our first op-ed “Buying local builds your community”, authored by board member Salam Nalia! It’s not to late to volunteer to write an op-ed – just contact me for questions and a shop local template.

Also a 2013 Small Business Saturday update: a reported $5.7 billion was spent at independent merchants on the day, an increase of 3.6% from a strong $5.5 billion in 2012.

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 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: CDC Small Business Finance and Coachella Valley Women’s Business Center were feature in The Desert Sun – “Valley entrepreneurs finding new ways to get started.”

New Report: The U.S. Department of Labor put out The Economic Status of Women of Color: A Snapshot.

New Report: The SBA Office of Advocacy put out a report Crossing the Employer Threshold: Determinants of Firms Hiring Their First Employee. Find out what are the factors that lead new businesses without
employees to hire their first employee. This is a significant aspect of small business job creation.

Micro-Business is Backbone Panel: Microenterprises, though small, can be a powerful force for creating jobs. On November 25, the Economic Opportunities Program and FIELD hosted the authors of three “Big Ideas for Jobs” papers, which highlighted the role microenterprises can play, and identified policies that can support the growth and creations of these small firms. Related: Elaine Edgcomb and Tamra Thetford at the Aspen Institute discuss their proposal for encouraging microenterprise investment as a job creation strategy in a recent Economic Development podcast.

Virtual Conference: CrowdFunding World Summit takes place on the interwebs from December 3 -16, 2013. With seven tracks including Best Practices For Entrepreneurs & Small Businesses, it’s sure to be information packed.

Healthcare Webinars: Small Business Majority and the Small Business Administration are hosting a webinar series that will discuss the new healthcare law – the Affordable Care Act – and what it means for California small businesses. They’re on December 10, 17 in English and December 18 in Spanish.

Farm Finance Expo: California FarmLink host’s their annual Farm Finance Expo on December 12, 2013 from 1:00 to 5:00 pm at the Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services, 3333 3rd Avenue, Sacramento. Panels will include lenders, farmers and trainers who will discuss farm operating, infrastructure and land loans; sources of capital; preparing loan applications; and building, maintaining and repairing credit. Register for the Farm Finance Expo.

Free Webinar: CFED hosts Findings from the BETA Project on December 17, 2013 at 12:00-1:00 PT // 3:00- 4:00 pm EST. The BETA Project was launched to improve the effectiveness of products and services designed to help people bolster their financial security. In the 12 months since, we’ve worked closely with three organizations to understand a problem in their program, design solutions and test them.

Fellowship Opportunity: The BALLE Fellowship is North America’s only fellowship dedicated solely to advancing the local economy movement, and where other programs focus on individual social entrepreneurs trying to scale single enterprises, we focus on local economy connectors – people who each represent, convene, and influence communities of hundreds of community entrepreneurs. Deadline is December 15, 2013.

Funding Opportunity: The CDFI Fund announced the opening of its FY 2014 round of Financial and Technical Assistance Programs, anticipating up to $191 million in awards (subject to the passage of appropriations for FY 2014). The application deadline is midnight, December 23, 2013. Learn more about the CDFI FY 2014 Funding Round and download the application.