The BALLE Leakage Calculators

BALLE affiliation?
enter BALLE network if applies
It can take BALLE staff up to two business days to process your order.

 How self-reliant is your county or zip code?

What are the opportunities for job-creating, leak-plugging new businesses?

How self-reliant is your town in food?

Where can you find the nearest local bank or credit union?

 

The new BALLE Leakage Calculators are designed to answer those questions.  Three calculators are now available.

Calculator pricing:

We are pleased to offer BALLE network members a one-month subscription rate of just $50.  Other first-time users also can subscribe for the low rate of $100.  

Groups in WA State cannot yet purchase the calculator online. If you are a WA-based group, please contact us to place your order.

Benefits of using the calculators:

These dynamic tools instantly provide the serious local-living-economy planner with critical information. Designed to help you decipher exactly what your community buys and imports, the calculators reveal the obvious in-demand business and job creation opportunities available to you.

Calculating leaks can be invaluable for living economy economic development for six reasons:

  • Policymakers have a clearer vision of how to allocate scarce public dollars for economic development.
  • Existing small-business proprietors have a better sense of promising opportunities for expansion, and entrepreneurs see the most profitable markets for start ups.
  • Equipped with a community-wide marketing analysis, local banks, lenders and investors can better calibrate their allocations of commercial capital.
  • Foundations, nonprofits, and grassroots groups have a better sense of which economic sectors should be targeted for community action.
  • Consumers can better appreciate the potential payoffs of buying more goods and services locally.

Also, a BALLE network can begin to measure, year by year, the specific benefits LLE initiatives are conferring on a given community.

Every good or service imported unnecessarily from outside your community means lost income, jobs, and taxes from the business that might have supplied these items locally.  Many dollar "leaks" are therefore opportunities for new or expanded local business.

Three leakage calculators are now available:

  • Overview Calculator. The leakage calculator tells you exactly how many jobs are possible in each 1100 sectors of your economy, and enables you to focus your economic-development efforts accordingly.
  • Food Leakage Calculator.  Here you can dig deeper into opportunities for creating jobs through food localization.  For example:  How many more cows and steers does my community need to feed itself meat and dairy products?  What’s the “import substitution” opportunity for raising chickens and pigs, or for growing fruits, vegetables, and grains?
  • Financial Leakage Calculator.  This tool will allow you to easily find local banks and credit unions. You’ll find estimates of the kinds of long-term financial resources sloshing around in your community’s savings, checking, and pension accounts. You’ll know what kind of investment capital is available for the next generation of great local businesses in your community.