Start a BALLE Network

Find a core group of business champions who share your vision! This is critical - local business people trust and respect other local business people and everyone wants to know who else is involved. To find champions, take the owners of a few different businesses out to coffee one or two at a time and present examples of how BALLE networks have worked in other communities to the benefit of local businesses and the entire community, then let them talk! Ask them for the names of other local business owners you could approach together.

Businesses that make up the building blocks of a Local Living Economy are good first businesses to approach (see FAQ #6). Local bookstores, food cooperatives, community newspapers, local hardware, drug, and office supply stores and neighborhood coffee shops make great prospects.

Encourage ownership of the idea in your community! Give early champions the title of “founders” of your local network. Credit and praise the founders every chance you can. These are busy folks who give a lot of themselves.

Form a Steering Committee

After a couple of months you may have five or six businesses interested in moving forward. Call a first steering committee meeting. A great early activity is for each committee member to survey four or five other business owners to uncover the need for your services and to generate new interest in your community. Another great early activity is to take an inventory of what local resources are available to meet basic community needs in a sustainable way – food, clothing, energy, housing, transportation, finance, media, arts/culture, education, and waste disposal - and to consider how they can be supported, promoted, and connected.

Out of respect for everyone’s time, we recommend clear agendas for your meetings that are sent out in advance. Stick to your meeting times. Consider organizing a kick-off event or first program for team building, rather than spending early days wordsmithing mission statements. Avoid showing up at a meeting with a blank white board. Bring drafts and ideas that others can work from. People like to be involved with action groups, not meeting groups.

It is often a good idea to schedule a kick-off event a few months out from your first steering committee meeting. This should serve as a motivating deadline for incorporating your organization, opening a bank account, developing your collateral materials, creating your membership dues structure, and determining the benefits of membership.

Recruit Members!

As you evolve to a membership organization with member benefits and services, we recommend developing a firm framework before you begin accepting member dues. People like to know what they're getting for their dues and what everyone else is getting at their levels of dues.

Here is an example of a dues structure:

AND consider asking business members to become Founding Members at $1,000 per year to receive additional benefits such as promotion and public thanks at all your public forums and workshops, in your newsletter, and on your website, and free admission for employees to events.

Because your services and member benefits will still be developing early on, we also recommend starting with a membership discount for anyone who joins before some future event, perhaps six months out. Try offering 25% off membership while you are still developing programs and services. It also will encourage some members to join early! And finally, developing a brochure and website content that lays this out before you ask for dues is also comforting to people. They like to know their money is going to a "real" organization!

(2) How do we recruit early members?

Talk about the benefits that other communities have seen for their members and the unique benefits your network is offering (see the Sample Member Benefits Document):

(3) Do we need to be a nonprofit organization?

You can start by simply incorporating the organization and getting a local bank account. Your organization can propose and do contract work for government or other organizations and you can collect membership dues and events income. Many of your members will write off their membership fees as a marketing expense, so you may not see early demand for 501(c)(3) (US nonprofit) status.

Once you are more established and interested in applying for charitable grants from foundations you may want to become a 501(c)(3), entitling your donors to tax-deductible contributions. You could also consider partnering with another 501(c)(3) that will provide you with fiscal sponsorship. This relationship usually means your fiscal sponsor will charge some percentage of the funds you raise for administrative expenses to generate necessary reports for your donor foundations. In either case, BALLE can be of assistance to your local network.

(4) Where can we get funding to get started and how much will we need?

This largely depends on what programs and initiatives you take on and the pace at which you add new ones. Some networks start with a group of busy business people, all of whom are volunteers, and none of whom are the lead coordinator. These networks may spend a year deciding their vision and goals and programs and services, and creating their collateral materials.

Other networks have more ambitious goals and a dedicated coordinator. An amazing amount of progress can be made with a few thousand dollars, some examples and customizable materials provided by BALLE, and committed steering committee members. With significant volunteer time (15 hours a month from each steering committee member and a volunteer coordinator able to work almost half-time on organizing efforts), it is an achievable goal to aim for enough funding (from underwriters, member dues, and events income) to cover a part-time staff person six to ten months out from your first meeting.

Decide on a membership dues structure early on.

Ask business members to become Sponsoring or Founding Members at $1,000 per year to receive additional benefits such as promotion and public thanks at all your public forums and workshops and in your newsletter and on your website, and free admission for employees to events.

Solicit underwriters for quarterly events. If you have an active calendar of events, consider asking an underwriter to support your efforts at $5,000 per quarter. Your city or county government may be supportive. Consider themes for your events each quarter of the year and consider a match for that theme, such as your food co-op for local food systems or a solar power company for a quarter on energy.

Charge admission fees for your public forums. Ask your steering committee to chip in the funds for committee meeting snacks or facilitators. You’re all in this together.

(5) What about ongoing funding?

Membership dues, events income, sponsors, and underwriters are important sources of revenue for your annual budget.

Once you have a dedicated steering committee, a set of programs and services, and early collateral materials, we recommend that you ask for membership dues. A dues structure helps new people to get involved who don’t want to be steering committee members. A structure helps them see their responsibilities and what they can expect in getting involved. The dues income helps you to offer early programs and services.

Often the income from early events is not much more than your costs, even when leveraging significant volunteer labor. Consider developing one or two annual events that are larger in scope and can become fundraisers. Once you have planned and implemented these events a first time, they become less costly and are likely to generate more revenue the second time around. Annual events could be a Local Living Economy/Sustainability conference; a Social Venture Institute in partnership with the Social Venture Network; a Healthy Home and Garden Tour of homes and buildings in your area that feature low-impact development, gardening, and renewable energy; a “Taste of…” with local restaurants and farmers…Use your imagination and learn what others have tried!

Grants may be a possibility. Consider grants from local community foundations. Foundations may be interested in supporting your projects that involve business and the environment, local food systems, or low-impact development. Always, remember that people generally don’t give money to people they don’t know…So form relationships with the right people within targeted foundations.

Visit with economic development agencies, city government, and department of ecology offices locally to see if they offer project funding that can meet both of your organizations' goals. These government agencies can contract with your organization.

What can you sell? Local business coupon books, T-shirts, and bumper stickers, advertising in your online local marketplace...Brainstorm with your members - they are business people, after all!

(6) We want business owners to join but they are so busy. Should we focus our efforts on concerned citizens?

This is a fine balancing act. Business owners are busy and you need significant volunteer energy to build Local Living Economies and an organization in your region. Yet business owners see great benefit in participating in a network with other business owners. Full-time students, activists, or other concerned citizens do not face the same challenges as businesses committed to using their organizations as role models and vehicles for change while making payroll.

It is true that building a Local Living Economy requires everyone but how many programs and services can your network successfully deliver? Can you effectively reach a large percentage of the general public to change behaviors as well as serve business members well? Focus can be empowering.

Be clear in your mission so that all members as well as others interested in learning more understand your focus. Consider building a steering committee made up of both committed individuals who have time, energy and passion for your mission, AND seasoned business owners who have respect and credibility in your community.

Consider offering memberships to businesses and to individuals, with different levels of services provided to each. For instance, you may promote member businesses, but not the businesses associated with individual members. Focus your significant outreach and recruitment efforts on potential business members.

(7) What kinds of businesses are other BALLE networks recruiting for membership?

(8) Do you have suggestions for criteria for membership?

Sample criteria from Sustainable Connections, Northwest Washington’s BALLE network:

(9) What about nonprofit organizations as members?

Nonprofits are also employers that make purchases and affect the local community and environment. Some have relevant expertise from which your business members could benefit. Consider welcoming them as business members.

(10) Should we have a membership test that ensures we have only “sustainable” businesses as members?

Becoming a monitoring organization that evaluates the sustainability of potential members and approves or disproves their application is fraught with challenges. How much staff time do you have to dedicate to monitoring? What would that monitoring look like? By which standards will you measure the businesses? Can you name a purely "sustainable" business?

We are all on a path and at different places on that path. We have an opportunity because Local Living Economies tend to attract a wider group of business owners than those who see themselves as “green” or “alternative.” If we reject a business owner who has genuine interest in progressing from wherever they are right now, we will never reach more than the choir… and change isn’t possible without the rest of the congregation!

Consider asking members to create an annual “pledge to action” or some other commitment to take a new step down the path. Support them in taking those steps by facilitating collaboration to make new choices more convenient or affordable through education and mentoring and through publicly promoting the importance of purchasing from community-based businesses.

(11) What if a businessperson from a nearby Wal-Mart or other non-local public company really cares about these concepts and wants to join?

Welcome them! Individuals working for positive change within large corporations face significant challenges. If they want to work to connect, strengthen, and promote local businesses and farms, and they think your network is a place where they can learn, contribute, and benefit, they should join you! Invite them as individual members – you aren’t promoting the business they work for, they are helping to promote Local Living Economies.

If they want to join as a business, let them know that your network is for local business owners who have the authority and freedom to make and implement any decision they’d like to across their entire business. Our goal is to work with the decision makers, owners who:

Additionally, your local network is not fully able to serve all arms of a large multinational company. Consider recommending Businesses for Social Responsibility, an organization with expertise in sharing best practices among publicly traded multinational corporation employees who are working within these constraints.

(12) Help! People aren’t doing what they said they would. I feel like I’m doing everything!

Form committees or work groups to allow members and volunteers to focus. Never leave a meeting with unassigned objectives (even if that assignment is to defer for discussion at the next meeting). Be aware that joining a committee can instill the "every Tuesday, 8 a.m., for the rest of my life…" fear. Be clear about the committee’s objectives – what plans do you need them to implement, and upon completion, can they disband? Consider calling them Action Teams or Work Groups.

LOVE your volunteers! These are not employees. Yes, they should feel accountable and that their work is important, but it definitely has to be FUN! They are volunteering because it's fun and they feel good about what and how they are contributing. They will stop volunteering if those things change.

Give your volunteers a lot of pats on the back! Create an award that is passed from person to person for outstanding contributions – you may give it the first time, but the recipient should pass it to the next outstanding contributor.

Make sure the network isn’t equated with you alone. Regularly emphasize the volunteer nature of the network. Rotate the meeting chair for your steering committee. Ensure everyone is empowered to contact each other and to suggest new initiatives. Make decisions by consensus (not unanimity, but true consensus).

Be humble. Encourage your members' and volunteers' dreams rather than talking about your vision/legacy/personal goals. When the media wants to do a story about your network, pass the attention to your members. Their pictures and quotes should accompany the article.

(13) We’re past the start-up phase and want to grow – any tips?

Have a steering committee retreat. Analyze where you’ve come from and where you’d like to go. Identify resources needed to get you there.

Leverage your members' newsletters to share the word about your network. Many retailers including food co-ops, independent movie theaters, and bookstores have newsletters going out to several thousand people.

Partner with your Chamber of Commerce or university Small Business Development Center. You likely are offering workshops and events that they hadn’t previously considered.

Be clear about who you are and what you do! Clearly state your case or elevator speech:

(14) Could you just quickly summarize how to organize one more time?

The Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia proposes the following as a potential organizing model to consider:

Organize around interest groups or building blocks: food and agriculture, renewable energy, clothing, housing/green building, alternative transportation, community capital, independent media, downtown retail, neighborhood arts & culture, craftspeople, and waste and recycling.

1.  First take an Inventory to identify the community-based businesses, non-profit organizations, and local government agencies currently operating in each area/building block.

2.  Recruit businesses to join the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) interest group/building blocks.

3.  Strengthen the network in each building block:

4.  Fill in the gaps to build a local living economy:

5.  Educate SBN members and the public. Pull from interest groups to plan educational programs on local living economies such as:

6.  Advocate supportive public policy