Business
Local businesses
Small-scale, locally-owned businesses are fundamental components of strong, resilient communities and economies. Unlike corporate chain stores and absentee-owned big businesses, they keep local wealth circulating locally, serve local networks of production and consumption, give character, quality and beauty to localities, and can help foster social connection and neighborliness.
Local businesses Actions
Start a "Buy Local" campaign.
Start a "Buy Local" campaign.
Multiply the benefits of buying locally by creating a campaign to encourage local residents and visitors to support independently-owned shops and artisans.
Take action
- Start a "buy local" campaign with Totally Locally's comprehensive Totally Locally Town Kit. The kit includes templates for posters, bag stuffers, badges, postcards, press releases and more, plus step-by-step advice for a successful campaign. It is UK-based, but applicable in any English-speaking country.
- This factsheet produced by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance tells you How to Start a Buy Local Campaign, including tips on creating a local business alliance.
- Improve existing campaigns with the American Independent Business Alliance's guide to best practices, Building "Buy Local" Campaigns that Shift Culture and Spending.
- Find an existing 'buy local' initiative or group through the network members of the American Independent Business Alliance's list of Members (US) and Totally Locally's list of Totally Locally Towns (UK), and Go Local First (Australia).
Get inspired
- Teenagers in the US state of South Dakota launched the Miner County Buy Local campaign, encouraging residents to spend 10% more at local businesses. In the following year, money spent locally increased by $15 million.
- The Buy Fresh, Buy Local campaign in the US state of Iowa has been around a while: it was launched by the University of Northern Iowa in 2003. It's also very successful: the dollar volume of purchases by retailers that partner with the program has grown by at least 10-fold since its start.
Shop at locally-owned businesses.
Shop at locally-owned businesses.
Online shopping seems convenient and chain stores appear cheap, but both have many hidden costs: as local businesses lose trade, the local economy loses vitality, our neighbors lose their livelihoods, and the environment suffers. From a big picture perspective, shopping locally is the real bargain.
Take action
- Make a list of things you regularly purchase at large stores, and services you contract from large non-local companies. This is a great activity to do with neighbors and friends!
- Draft a list of local alternatives that address these needs.
- Fill in gaps by consulting local business directories, local markets, neighborhood listserves, and friends. Find local businesses through a business alliance such as the American Independent Business Alliance's list of Members (US).
- For goods and services that you can’t readily find, see if you can work with a local business or artisan to produce what you need. For example, before purchasing plastic furniture, reach out to a local woodworker.
- Make a commitment to start shifting your purchases towards local producers and retailers, and share your journey with your community.
Get inspired
- Neal Gorenflo, executive director of Shareable, committed to buying 100% from local businesses for one year. Read about his experience in his article How my hyper-local COVID-19 year changed my consumption habits.
Support genuine fair trade.
Support genuine fair trade.
When something we need can't be produced locally or regionally, sourcing it fairly from small ecological producers or businesses in another country is the next best thing. If done right, this can help support dignified local livelihoods elsewhere. But there is a risk: by encouraging small producers, especially those in the Global South, to join an export-led economy rather than producing for local consumption, we may be unintentionally undermining genuine self-reliance in their communities. Even producers engaged in fair trade can find their livelihoods threatened by competition from other countries, shifts in global markets, or changing consumer preferences. Trade is genuinely fair when small producers are meeting local needs first before exporting any surpluses, and have a real say in determining prices and terms of trade.
Take action
- Use the Fair World Project's guide The New International Guide to Fair Trade Labels to distinguish authentic, transformative fair trade labels that support small-scale, ecological producers from "fair-washed" corporate co-opted labels.
- Quickly decode the labels at your store with the Fair World Project's summary Reference Guide to Fair Trade and Worker Justice Certifications.
Get inspired
- The Community Agroecology Network works with small-scale coffee farmers in Mexico and Central America promoting ecologically-sound growing practices and vibrant local food economies that foster fair market channels and farmer control of seeds. The network prioritizes local food needs first, and then shade-grown organic coffee for export.
- Good Market Global, an online platform started in Sri Lanka, is a place for customers, businesses, and small producers to connect with each other and form business relationships. All Good Market members adhere to rigorous environmental and human rights standards, and the website publishes a detailed audit of each member's practices.
- The Small Producers' Symbol is a 100% producer-driven, democratically-run intercontinental network of over 120 ecological small-scale agriculture organizations. They work with committed companies and customers to produce and trade products that are high-quality, agroecological, organic and free of exploitation, providing living income for producers and complete traceability from producer to consumer.
Start or join a small business loyalty program.
Start or join a small business loyalty program.
Small businesses can band together and create shared "loyalty" programs to help encourage and incentivize residents to shop local and small, keeping wealth circulating in the local economy.
Get started
- Learn about options for small business loyalty programs through Copper Chronicles' article How to Start the Small Business Loyalty Program of Your Dream. Several companies offer platforms to help individual businesses and business alliances get started.
Get inspired
- Credibles in the US offers an app for customers to pre-pay for food at local retailers, creating an opportunity for up-front investment similar to community supported agriculture programs.
- Supportland in the US state of Oregon offers a digital rewards program for shopping at small businesses, where rewards can be used at any business in the network. Launched in 2010, it gained more than 80,000 users within 5 years.
- Totally Locally in the UK offers a Disloyalty Card as part of its small business campaign kit: shop at four independently-owned businesses and get a free cup of coffee from a local shop.
Participate in local business alliances.
Participate in local business alliances.
Forming local business alliances and publishing directories of small, independent businesses can help owners increase their visibility, represent their interests in local government, and become more resilient together. Celebrate the businesses that make your town unique by creating alliances and directories alongside Buy Local campaigns.
Take action
- If no directory of small, locally-owned businesses exists in your area, create one. Map out existing local projects, initiatives, businesses, and collectives that address basic needs such as food, energy, furniture and home goods, tools, bicycles, and health clinics. Publish a newsletter or build an online directory with one of the many guides available, such as Templatic's How to Start an Online Directory Site in 30 Minutes.
- Start a new local business alliance with the guides on the American Independent Business Alliance's Resource page, available to members (US).
- For small, independent businesses in Australia, get involved with Go Local First, and in the US, join Small Business Rising, a coalition urging elected leaders and regulators to break the power of corporate monopolies and establish rules that support small businesses.
Get inspired
- Local Food Connect in Melbourne, Australia offers an impressive online directory of local farmers, as well as food swaps, community gardens, and food justice initiatives.
- Building a Local Economy in Vermont, US, annually publishes a free Locally Grown Guide, a directory of farmers and food businesses, and distributes copies throughout the area. BALE had tried an online version, but found that printed guides worked better for their community.
- Think Local First, a project of Sustainable Connections in Bellingham, Washington, US, produces a Local First Gift Guide, a Think Local First gift card, a local member business directory, and an Eat Local First guide.
- Businesses in the Adams Morgan Business Improvement District in Washington, DC, US, contribute an additional local tax in return for shared services like cleaning up sidewalks, hosting street fairs, liaising with local governments, and running local business marketing campaigns.
Share business resources and services.
Start a local business to meet basic needs.
Start a local business to meet basic needs.
There is a desperate need today for livelihoods that provide a sense of purpose and positive contribution, and that build up and sustain local economies and environments. One way to achieve this is through local businesses oriented around providing for the genuine basic needs of the local community. Doing this successfully is a big challenge when so much of economic policy is skewed towards the big and the global, but with devoted community support it is possible.
Take action
- Transition from a 'deadlihood' to an 'alivelihood' with the help of the article 52 Alivehoods by Manish Jain of Shikshantar and Swaraj University, which includes a list of eco-careers for resilient local economies.
- The book Raising Dough, by Elizabeth Ü, is a guide to financing socially-responsible food businesses.
- The Community-Supported Industry initiative of the Schumacher Center for New Economics provides a number of resources to "co-imagine, co-develop, co-finance, and patronize “import-replacement” businesses" to create environmentally-responsible products for local markets.
- Explore the range of skills that will take center stage in a degrowth economy with Upskilling for a Post-Growth Future Together by Donnie Maclurcan of the Post-Growth Institute.
- Assess how the skills you already have (or want to acquire) can create value for your community, and consider growing these skills into a livelihood or business.
- Teaching others what you know is a way to pass on these skills and keep them alive in your community.
Get inspired
- Kerry McCurdy in New Zealand turned a passion for bee-keeping into a thriving business, first as Backyard Honeybees and now as Beezthingz. Among other services, Beezthingz links independent beekeepers with farmers in need of pollinators.
- Chris Holmgren in the US expanded his woodworking business, Seneca Creek Joinery, into a community-scale production facility that handles all aspects of wood processing, from dead tree removal to finished furniture. He works with the city government and local tree removal companies to ensure that no local wood goes to waste.
- In Two Fold: A Community-Supported Bakery, Kirsten Bradley describes the extension of this successful model from agriculture to small business - in this case a local bakery - where community members subscribe for weekly local bread by paying in advance.
- In this article on the Vikalp Sangam website, Sayantani Nath writes about two friends who started the first zero-waste shop in Goa, India to both tackle the plastic waste crisis, and strengthen the local food economy.
Policy action: Prioritize local suppliers in procurement decisions.
Policy action: Prioritize local suppliers in procurement decisions.
Institutions – governments, hospitals, schools, universities, etc. – spend enormous amounts of money each year on procuring goods like food and energy. Unfortunately, much of that spending goes to large-scale profit-driven corporate entities with no real connection to the local economy. The public procurement movement aims to redirect this massive purchasing power towards more local, resilient, fair and ecological production. Public procurement – also called "green purchasing" or "progressive procurement," among other names – is a powerful and effective strategy for quickly and durably shifting food and other systems towards the small and local, as well as driving other positive environmental and social changes. It is also a way to fight back against abusive corporate practices and power.
Take action
- Change the food procurement policies of institutions in your community with example policies from the Good Food Purchasing Program (US), and PolicyLink's Local Food Procurement - Equitable Development Toolkit (US).
- Check out the Making Spend Matter Toolkit from URBACT, a European network of cities practicing progressive procurement. Also, see how procurement is central to the "Preston Model," in the report, How We Built Community Wealth in Preston.
- For farmers wanting to connect with procurement programs, see ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture's Farm to Institution resources.
- In the US, if your state does not already have a Double Up Food Bucks program that matches food stamp assistance dollars spent on fresh, locally grown food, get in touch with the Fair Food Network to learn how to bring this innovative program that boosts local farming and food security to your community.
- If you are an employee, administrator, board member or volunteer for an institution, you can push for changes to procurement policies. Offices, schools, universities, and hospitals have all created successful programs.
- If you are part of a community group, consider creating a campaign that focuses on pressuring particular institutions to procure food, energy, and goods from local, ethical, and sustainable sources.
Get inspired
- The UK city of Preston has become a model for enlightened procurement policies. Read about it in this article from the European Network of Corporate Observatories (ENCO)
- Another UK city, Manchester, analyzed its spending and then reallocated it whenever possible to towards smaller businesses in the local community. For a detailed look at Manchester's procurement policies and their impact, check out this case study from the Urban Sustainability Exchange.
- The Odisha Millet Mission is a public procurement program instituted by the state government of Odisha, India, in collaboration with a diverse network of stakeholders in 2017. It aims to revive and promote agroecological cultivation of highly nutritious, climate-resilient millets by incorporating them into public procurement schemes like the public distribution system (PDS). As Bindu Mohanty writes in Odisha Millet Mission: The Successes and the Challenges, the program is currently sourcing from 51,045 farmers, and by 2020 "finger millet, locally known as mandia was distributed to 1.6 million households via the PDS."
- Cook County Good Food Purchasing Program, in the Chicago region of the US, adopted the Good Food Purchasing Program as its policy in 2018, becoming the third and largest municipality in the US to do so. This aligned its food procurement policies with the core values of sustainable, equitable food systems: local sourcing, nutrition, environmental sustainability, workers’ rights, and animal welfare.
- The Los Angeles Food Policy Council’s Good Food Purchasing Policy supports local farms, workers' rights, and kids' nutrition, as well as the broader local economy.
- In the US city of Boston, the city council passed a groundbreaking food justice ordinance that covers everything from food workers' rights to local and sustainable food procurement to urban gardening.
- The Pennsylvania Agricultural Surplus Program in the US reimburses local farmers for donating "safe, wholesome food products" to local hunger relief efforts. In 2020-21, some 1.7 million pounds of local food was distributed to over 486,000 households in the state under the program.
- Double Up Food Bucks is a program in many states in the US that matches the value of food assistance credits spent on healthy, fresh, locally grown food, benefiting those in need of food assistance, local farmers, and the local economy. In 2020, the program provided access to nearly 52 million pounds of fresh local food, serving about 883,000 people and benefiting some 5,000 farmers.
- In The Next Chapter for Farm to School: Milling Whole Grains in the Cafeteria, Hannah Wallace reports that "Oregon’s legislature has been funding farm-to-school projects since 2007, when it budgeted for a permanent, full-time farm-to-school manager position. In July [2021], the legislature re-upped the Oregon Farm-to-School Grant Program, setting aside $10.2 million in funding for schools to purchase and serve Oregon-grown foods."
- In Sweden, public sector purchasing under the Green Public Procurement policy has helped increase organic food consumption by 33% and increase organic farmland area by 16% in ten years. Read more from Urban Food Futures: In Sweden, public sector purchasing helps conversion to organic production.
Policy action: Campaign for policies that support small businesses.
Policy action: Campaign for policies that support small businesses.
Too often, economic development policies are oriented towards attracting and supporting large corporate businesses – one reason that corporations have accumulated so much wealth and power at the expense of communities and local economies. But it doesn't have to be this way. Policies can be shifted to achieve the opposite end: supporting a vibrant local network of small, independent, locally-rooted, regenerative businesses that help meet real needs, reduce inequality, and keep wealth circulating locally.
Take action
- Local governments can find specific policy ideas in this article about small businesses and monopoly power by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (US).
- This local policy action toolkit from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance not only provides a list of specific policy shifts that would help local businesses, it offers useful tips on how to engage with your local elected officials.
- Share localization economist Michael Shuman's list of model legislative actions in support of local business with your local political leaders, and encourage them to push for these policy shifts.
Be inspired
- Localise West Midlands in the UK is a non-profit think tank, campaign group, and consultancy working towards “local supply chains, money flow, ownership and decision-making for a more just and sustainable economy.” They work in many ways to catalyze systemic change in the West Midlands Region – from creating a local currency, to promoting the decentralization of democratic power, to supporting local businesses and farms.
Voices from the field
- In her talk An entrepreneur's view of the new economy, Judy Wicks – a significant contributor to both the local food and socially-responsible business movements – describes the history and philosophy of the famous White Dog Café, which she founded in 1983.
Policy
- Check out the Guide to Policy Tools that Strengthen Independent Businesses by the Institute for Local Self Reliance (USA).
- Local economy expert Michael Shuman lists 12 policy recommendations to help rescue local businesses and local economies from the impacts of COVID-19 shudowns, in A Dozen Asks for Your Governor.
Resources
- See the ‘Top 10 Reasons to Support Locally Owned Businesses’ from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
- Why Buy Local?, by Sustainable Connections, shares research demonstrating that "Small-scale, locally owned businesses create communities that are more prosperous, connected, and generally better-off across a wide range of metrics."
- If you need to be convinced that the playing field is tilted to favor the largest businesses, read How Washington Punishes Small Business: Lawmakers love to talk about the little guy, but their policies routinely favor the big and powerful, by Stacy Mitchell and Fred Clements.
- Susan Witt of the Schumacher Center for New Economics writes about the concept and practice of a community supported economy, using the Berkshire region of Massachusetts, US, as an example.