After 3 days of intensive advocacy on Capitol Hill as well as DOL, SBA and CDFI Fund, it is fair to say that our government leaders are waking up to the reality that micro businesses are the real job creators in our economy.
Senator Feinstein serves on a Working Committee for job creation and she is open to new ideas, e.g. by fostering self employment through DOL-WIA training funds.
My meeting with Donna Gambrell, Director of CDFI Fund continued the efforts of our members and CRC to promote the needs of small businesses in CA for a fair share of CDFI funding. We discussed how CAMEO was leveraging CDFI dollars by working with banks like Wells Fargo and Rabobank to make more investments in nonprofit lenders, and why we need more loan loss reserves for this purpose. She also agreed to co-host a webinar to help our members improve the quality of our CDFI grant applications. And she agreed to take a look at creating a separate track for grants for small and micro business lending, so we are not competing against the large housing and real estate focused CDFIs.
With SBA’s Chief of Staff, Ana Ma, we discussed ARC and our position that CDFIs could run this program more effectively than the banks. I also advocated for the Women’s Business Centers and the need for WBCs to serve Fresno and Rural North regions. Both the House and Senate Small Business Committees are presenting conflicting positions on future funding for WBCs. We were advised to provide compelling impact data to these committees to support increased funding.
Jane Oates, Assistant Secretary for Dept. of Labor’s Employment & Training Division, told both AEO’s Policy Director, Jenice Jones, and myself that we would need a new statute to change performance measures for self employment training under WIA. We were hoping that a simple policy letter would serve, but now CAMEO is exploring a number of strategies to change the statute and allow funding to flow to micro business training and TA: reauthorization of WIA in 2010, new language in DOL’s budget appropriation, and if President Obama creates a new Jobs Bill, we would seek an amendment of WIA at that time. All of these approaches would take time, which, of course, unemployed people don’t have. Please keep sending us your stories of clients who were unemployed and then successfully started a small business. This will help CAMEO maintain a high profile for our position.
In the meantime, we are securing bi-partisan support from CA members on the Labor & Education committees and building awareness among committee staff. Everyone wants to do something support job creation. Our meetings, along with the urging of Micro Enterprise advocates at the Access to Capital Forum held simultaneously on Nov. 18 (Thanks Connie Evans (AEO), and CAMEO members Eric Weaver and Kurt Chilcott!!!) are driving the message home: Micro Enterprises are California’s Job Generators.
Thanks to Cathy Townsend of Townsend Public Affairs for securing these top level meetings and focusing our message.
