Think small, shop locally

I picked up a brochure about from a group called The Sup­port Our Local Econ­omy (SOLE) Coali­tion when I was vis­it­ing the Green on the Green Fes­ti­val in down­town Wor­thing­ton a few weeks ago. They have banded together with local busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions to cre­ate a Think Colum­bus First Cam­paign. I love this idea and think it would be so ben­e­fi­cial to have this in Delaware County.

The SOLE Coali­tion is basi­cally a net­work of locally-minded inde­pen­dent busi­nesses, orga­ni­za­tions and cit­i­zens work­ing together to pro­mote “vibrant com­mu­ni­ties and neigh­bor­hoods in cen­tral Ohio.” Funded in part by a grant from the Colum­bus Foun­da­tion, SOLE is one of more than 80 local net­works affil­i­ated with BALLE (Busi­ness Alliance for Local Liv­ing Economies).

That’s how it’s all orga­nized, but here’s the cool part: The group focuses atten­tion on the fact that a sim­ple 10 per­cent shift from pur­chas­ing from a chain busi­ness to a local busi­ness can cre­ate 5,000 new jobs in Franklin County. I don’t know who did the math on that, but it’s pretty darn impressive.

Accord­ing to the brochure, and I would con­cur with what I’ve seen in the news and just seen in per­son, the Local Econ­omy Move­ment is grow­ing. The “buy/eat/live” locally phi­los­o­phy is finally get­ting through to many folks. It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? When you buy locally, it keeps the money cir­cu­lat­ing closer to home which cre­ates a rip­ple effect as those employ­ers and employ­ees spend your money locally. With cor­po­rate chains, quite a bit of your dol­lars are going out of town.

Think Colum­bus First is work­ing with groups like Local Mat­ters (a cen­tral Ohio resource deal­ing with local food); Sim­ply Liv­ing (the lead­ing cen­tral Ohio orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing local and sus­tain­able lifestyle choices); Kemba Finan­cial (the largest credit union in cen­tral Ohio); and ECDI (Eco­nomic and Com­mu­nity Devel­op­ment Insti­tute which lends to small busi­nesses and start-ups). These are some great resources and con­nec­tions work­ing together to cre­ate change.

Then there is the SBB pro­gram. The Small Busi­ness Beanstalk (thesbb.com) sup­ports busi­ness and com­mu­nity growth and has devised an SBB card. You can use the card at a num­ber of local busi­nesses for dis­counts or spe­cial deals. Some Pow­ell busi­nesses have joined, so the con­cept is creep­ing north. You’ll have to check out the hun­dreds of mer­chants par­tic­i­pat­ing by neigh­bor­hood online because there are so many.

I am hope­ful Delaware will soon see this kind of orga­nized Local Econ­omy Move­ment. In fact, it is already in the works with the efforts of many groups and indi­vid­u­als in town. But the more you are aware of it, ask for it and join the effort, the more our com­mu­nity will reap the rewards of an active and vibrant local, inde­pen­dent econ­omy. I just ordered my SBB card online because the Mean Bean joined offer­ing a sec­ond drink at half price … I’m in!

To learn more, visit livingeconomies.org, solenow.org, local-matters.org, simplyliving.org, kemba.org; ecdi.org and thesbb.com.

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of four with a spe­cial inter­est in learn­ing about green and local liv­ing trends.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Jun 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.