Alliance for a Resilient Small Business Economy

Since 2005, Small Business Majority has empowered America's diverse entrepreneurs to build a thriving and equitable economy.  Partnerships are the cornerstone of our model, enabling us to work across non-traditional sectors and better connect with our target communities. Collaborating with a variety of groups deepens our impact and helps us reach a wider audience of small business owners and their employees. We are a non-membership organization, which makes it easy to work with individual businesses, as well as business organizations.  

As an extension of these long-standing relationships, and based on feedback from our partners, we are developing a new equity-focused partnership program. The Alliance for a Resilient Small Business Economy (Alliance) consists of national, state and local business organizations, community groups, CDFIs and other capital providers, technical assistance resources and economic justice entities—all serving businesses owned by people of color, women, immigrants and others who face long-standing systemic barriers to accessing business support. The Alliance formalizes partnerships among these organizations, creating a stronger national community of small business-serving organizations and giving an advocacy voice to smaller organizations that typically do not have a seat at policymaking tables. 

The Alliance for a Resilient Small Business Economy is convening a diverse group of stakeholders in pursuit of a common goal: To break down systemic barriers that currently block equitable access to business capital and assistance. We hope you will join us in elevating the voices of diverse business groups and small business owners. Using our combined resources, we will not only address entrepreneurs’ immediate needs, but also drive long-term, systemic change toward a more inclusive, equitable society. 

Benefits of Joining the Alliance 

Website & Social Media Connection 

Let us help you get the word out! Small Business Majority has a robust presence on the web and we’d like to feature you. We have an excellent following on our social media including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Our newsletter regularly reaches 57,000 small businesses, business organizations and other stakeholders. We frequently blog on our own site, and several other prominent business sites. Alliance members will be featured on our website and through social media platforms.  

Advocacy 

The Alliance will coordinate national, state and local advocacy campaigns for policy changes that increase equitable support for small businesses. Many policy conversations are driven by larger statewide or national policy groups, without inclusion of a local, grassroots voice. The Alliance will address this by elevating the voices of member organizations, coordinating advocacy strategies as appropriate and providing members with tools to speak out on policies that affect them and their networks. This may include opportunities to partner on media engagement, author joint op-eds and participate in media trainings. For specific campaigns, Small Business Majority will provide digital promotional toolkits or shareables.  

The Alliance will identify policy initiatives based on member feedback and design strategies to make a collective impact. Our first major national policy initiative will be the development of and advocacy for a comprehensive, restructured small business capital infrastructure to ensure that underserved businesses, particularly those owned by people of color, women and immigrants, are empowered to lead the rebuilding of their communities and the nation. 

Research 

We partner with nationally recognized polling firms to conduct scientific research on trending small business issues and pending legislative policies. We also conduct surveys of business owners in our network on timely issues and disseminate this survey data on a regular basis. This information helps ensure small businesses have a seat at the table with elected officials and decision makers. Alliance members will gain access to our survey data, including social media shareables, and press releases. 

The Alliance will facilitate collaboration with member organizations on small business research, particularly assessing the needs of minority- and women-owned businesses and their employees. Our goal is to unite our resources and publish research that amplifies the voices of our collective networks.  

We are currently exploring the possibility of developing a regular survey to collect feedback from Alliance members’ networks. This survey will monitor current small business sentiment while also providing the opportunity for Alliance members to submit survey questions and learn more about their own networks. All Alliance members will receive each poll’s final report, including a social media toolkit to help promote the findings. Members will be able to easily co-brand the report and share with their networks. Additionally, with a large enough sample of respondents from an Alliance member’s network, the organization can receive a personalized report comparing responses from their own network with the larger pool of respondents. 

Referrals  

We connect small business owners with vetted partners that provide capital, technical assistance and business planning resources (e.g., financial, marketing, business planning, human resources and procurement) through one-on-one interactions and via our online resource hub, Venturize.org. In particular, we connect small businesses to loan opportunities through our MatchFinder tool—connections to technical assistance via MatchFinder are forthcoming. Alliance members will be featured as appropriate on Venturize, increasing their capacity to promote their services, connect with local small business clients and network with each other. 

Education 

With our partners, we will co-host webinars, seminars and workshops to communicate information about responsible loans and other capital, business planning and public policy. Based on feedback from Alliance members, we will continually develop and update educational materials as needed to best support small business owners nationwide.