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Putting an economic support plan together for your legacy business program
Before you begin planning economic support as part of your legacy business program, you should first talk with your legacy business owners to understand their financial needs and goals. You should also meet with your municipal economic development and/or small business organizations, as well as any local small business, community development, or preservation organizations, to better understand which financial tools are currently available and accessible to legacy businesses. Oftentimes, you will not have to start your program from scratch, as these partners may have a wealth of information, and input from discussions with them can help you kickstart a plan for your program.
Steps for Planning Economic Support
For this section, we will use the recommendations from the Small Business Administration (SBA) Framework and Guideline for Program Evaluation to develop the steps for plan implementation.
1. Baseline Economic Needs Survey/Audit
Meet with or survey your legacy business owners to understand the economic support needs across the group. Use their input to create an outline for the most essential elements of economic support across the group.
2. Baseline Government & Private Economic Support Audit
Meet with your local municipal and nonprofit partners that provide economic support tools for small businesses or historic preservation (See the Where to Look and Who to Talk To section for more information). Audit the local, state, and national economic tools available to help meet the needs identified by your legacy business owners.
3. Tailored Economic Program
Once you have identified all the economic resources available to your program, create an access, application, and administration path that is tailored to your business owner’s skills and understanding. Additionally, identify internal or external economic advisors or representatives (see Where to Look and Who to Talk To) who can assist your owners with accessing, applying for, or administering the economic support.
4. Economic Tool Integration
Ensure that the legacy business owners have the skill and understanding to maintain their own economic support. This could include everything from banking, to payments, to enrollment/reenrollment. Be sure and understand the capabilities of your participants before handing over full management of economic tools. This could be a considerable task for your program and may be a roadblock for some business owners to participate in the benefits of the program. Additionally, plan for any ongoing support of the economic support tools, like revolving funds or grants.
5. Follow-up and Evolution
The success of your economic support program is not guaranteed. Be sure and follow up with the owners to see how your program is working and if it has helped. This will help you evolve and improve by changing processes and offerings to better meet needs.
Things to Consider
Since economic support is not commonly integrated into current legacy business programs, it is not easy to put together a step-by-step implementation plan. That said, here are a few things to consider for long-term success as you plan your economic support program.
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Identify and secure multi-year funding for the economic support program. The financial issues your legacy business owners are facing are unlikely to go away once the program has started.
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Consider creating your own funding or having your partners dedicate funds specific to the legacy business program. This could include a matching-grant program to start, then evolve into a self-sustaining revolving fund.
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Track the metrics for the program. Can you identify what works and what doesn’t? Has the support saved or created jobs, and has displacement been slowed (e.g., are fewer businesses closing since the program started)? This type of information can take considerable time to track, so consider starting with self-reporting. Track everything from average rent cost to square footage used for legacy businesses. These metrics will be used to sell the success of your program and gain access to additional funding.
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Determine whether the amount and type of economic support are adequate to meet your goals and whether they are scalable to support additional legacy businesses in the future.