The Rural Developer - March 2006

• NREDA Updates
• Rural Resources

NREDA Member News!

Please share your news with our Editorial Committee! The Rural Developer quarterly electronic newsletter is a member benefit and success stories are encouraged. To submit an article, please email director@nreda.org and Mary Logan Wolf, NREDA Editor will follow up with you on your idea.

Send your Small Businesses to SBU
Rick Whalen, NREDA member and director of community and economic development for Butler County REC, Allison, IA, implemented a new program to help small business owners. The program, called the Small Business University (SBU), is the first online academy created especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs. SBU teaches the "3Ms" of business--money, marketing, and management--via 24 core courses including Creating a Loan Package, Attracting Investors, Promotions and Marketing 101 and Buying a Business. "SmallBizU has become a valuable Web-based tool for small businesses in our community," says Whalen.


Tell Your Communities: The World is Flat
"I know this is OLD news to most people, but I have been 'CD-reading' The World is Flat by Friedman. It is fantastic! I had heard and heard about it, but had not read it. The theories are not rocket science, but I wish that many of the rural communities we work with would read it and realize that we live in a large global world and it is getting flatter and flatter all of the time."
From Sherry Rose, NREDA member.


Fitzgerald appointed Rural Development Chief of Staff
In July, Agriculture Under Secretary for Rural Development Thomas Dorr announced the appointment of James F. Fitzgerald as chief of staff for USDA Rural Development.

Prior to his appointment as chief of staff, Fitzgerald, a native of Washington State, served as state executive director of the USDA Farm Service Agency in Spokane, Wash. Before that, he was president and owner of Fitzgerald Farms, Inc. of Clarkston, Wash., which has been in his family for four generations. He also previously worked for Federal Land Bank offices in Chehalis, Wash. and Lewiston, Idaho. Details: http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/.


More Earth Angels
Individual angel investors continued to form organized investor groups with the number of angel groups increasing by nearly 60 percent in the past three years, from an estimated 150 in 2002 to 250 last year, according to an analysis by the Angel Capital Education Foundation (ACEF) and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. The survey also revealed that the average angel group invested $1.45 million and that the average angel group invested $266,000 per round and $387,000 per company during calendar 2005. While investments by angel groups are a small fraction of the estimated $23.1 billion in total angel investment last year, the analysis indicates that the professionalism and sophistication of angel groups is increasing along with the number of groups. The analysis was released at the ACEF's recent annual North American Summit and the PowerPoint noting the statistics is available at angelcapitaleducation.org

You and Your Electric Cooperative Can Help Entrepreneurs

NREDA members can contact their local electric cooperatives to take advantage of a free, Internet-based, self-tutorial on money, management and marketing. SmallBizU® is tailor made for entrepreneurs and small business owners or wannabees.

Through an agreement with the originators, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, NRECA, is making SmallBizU® available to its members. Members work with their IT departments to post the free hyperlink version on their Web sites – as opposed to the pay on-line version. Electric cooperatives then market SBU to local businesses, chambers of commerce, libraries, economic development groups, banks, schools and member-owners in their service territories.

Fun, helpful and easily adaptable to a syllabus for middle and secondary schools as well as community colleges or universities, SBU has 24 courses. Each takes about three hours. Subjects include Creating a Loan Package, Attracting Investors, Promotions and Marketing 101 and Buying a Business.

SBU highlights are:

• Free access
• More than 4,000 animated slides with voice-over narration
• PowerPoint presentations
• Worksheets and toolsets
• Comprehensive resources

If your cooperative's business development, marketing or member services area hasn't taken advantage of this exceptional tool, please encourage your contact at the cooperative to get in touch with NRECA's Community and Economic Development unit and speak with Jessie Georgieva (jessie.georgieva@nreca.org; 703.907.5894) who can make it happen!