West Michigan Business and Community Partners

The first week of May marked “National Small Business Week”

It’s a time to celebrate small business.

Locally…

On that note, on June 6th a West Michigan organization that supports local business, Local First will be hosting its annual street party, you should check it out.

More on Nat’l Small Business week…

As the U.S. Small Business Administration states on its website:

“Every year since 1963, the President of the United States has issued a proclamation announcing National Small Business Week, which recognizes the critical contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners.”

Powerful Statistics…

Per the SBA’s website, you can’t argue with the impressive statistics on the value small business brings to our local communities:

• More than half of Americans either own or work for a small business, and
• they create about two out of every three new jobs in the U.S. each year.

Supporting the West Michigan Business Community

Small Businesses play an important rule in our economy. locally, I’m glad we have organizations committed to supporting the local business community like:

• GRAPE
• LinkedUPGrandRapids
• Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce
• LocalFirst
• The Economic Club of Grand Rapids

If you aren’t familiar with these organizations you can go to the websites and they make it pretty easy to get connected.

Community Lenders also Support the West Michigan Business Community

Last week the comptroller on currency, Thomas Curry, was speaking at the 2015 State Small Business Credit Initiative Conference, you can check out his remarks here

What impressed me about his remarks is how much of small business is funded by small banks…

As Mr. Curry stated:

“…community banks also play a very significant role in providing small business credit. Even though community banks hold just 8 percent of the assets of the banking industry, according to the Independent Community Bankers Association smaller community banks with less than $1 billion in assets made one-third of outstanding bank loans to small businesses.”

Community lenders and Community Partners –

Keep up the good work supporting our local business community!

Questions? Comments?

e-mail: Jeshua@dwlawpc.com

www.dwlawpc.com