BALLE Training Workshops

Building a Local BALLE Network
A “How-To” Workshop with the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
In partnership with BALLE networks and regional partners

Join us!
We believe locally owned, independent businesses are potent agents for change, uniquely prepared to take on economic, community, and environmental challenges with agility and a deep connection to place and relationships. Local businesses are more than profit-makers; they are neighbors, community builders, and the starting point for social innovation.

Learn how local, independent businesses networks throughout North America are transforming their economies into community-centered, green, and fair places to live and work through a focus on green jobs, sustainable industries, investing locally, and buying local first.

What will be covered?
Through a jam-packed day of presentations, group discussion and hands-on activities, you will pick up best practices and develop a plan for your community. We will cover the following aspects of network development, growth and success:

Getting started and catalyzing community change
Operations and staffing
Communications and community-based marketing
Fundraising and partnerships
Membership benefits and recruitment
Volunteer management
Step-by-step program planning for community campaigns

You’ll leave equipped with key principles, tools and relationships for building business and community innovation through the building blocks of a local living economy: independent retail, sustainable agriculture, energy efficiency and renewables, green building, local manufacturing, and community capital.

Who should attend?
Local business, government, and community representatives currently organizing or growing a local, independent business network. (Bringing several members of your steering committee is highly recommended.)

Lead Instructor
BALLE Executive Director, Michelle Long

Ms. Long is the co-founder and until recently, was the executive director of Sustainable Connections – one of BALLE’s oldest and largest networks. Its membership, now 650+ locally owned businesses, has led Bellingham, WA in becoming the nation’s top EPA-certified green power community, a leader in green building, in fostering hundreds of new relationships between farmers and food buyers, and shifting the purchasing behavior of 3 in 5 households toward choosing independent businesses first. An NPR Marketplace story called Bellingham the “epicenter of a new economic model” and in 2009, the National Resources Defense Council named Bellingham the #1 small City in the nation for urban progress toward sustainability. Ms. Long is the co-author of Local First: A How-to Guide, and was recently named one of the west coast’s “top 5 leading ladies of sustainability” by the Sustainable Industries Journal.

Workshop Fees
The workshop registration fee $145 for one registration, and $99 for each additional member of your community team (a savings of $46 per person).

The registration fee includes:

Continental breakfast and full lunch
A 100+page binder that accompanies the workshop topics
A full packet of sample language and program ideas to share in your community.

According to past workshop participants
“Your presenters were powerful, energetic, credible, refreshing, invigorating; genuinely a powerhouse quality team.”

“Listening to Michelle talk I feel entitled to expect the same of my community, of all communities. I feel like I’ve been given permission to make it happen, because I see that it has worked.”

“For people who are more do-ers than talkers about developing local community business networks this workshop is a must. You will receive inspiration, tested, successful tools and join a community of people dedicated to your success and sharing their stories and experience. Don’t miss it.”

Download our workshop flyer

Help us spread the word about our training workshop series! You can download a descriptive flyer here.

REGISTER FOR UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
Workshops last one day, and typically run from 8:30 am to 6 pm. Please email us if you have any questions.

2010 WORKSHOP DATES:

March 1 - Grand Rapids, Michigan - POSTPONED
April 1 - Madison, Wisconsin
May 20 - Charleston, South Carolina (immediately prior to BALLE's annual Business Conference)
June 14 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

RECENTLY COMPLETED WORKSHOP DATES:

February 1, 2010 - San Francisco, California (workshop complete)
November 16, 2009 – Bellingham, Washington (workshop complete)
October 26, 2009 – Santa Fe, New Mexico (workshop complete)
October 15, 2009 – San Francisco, California (workshop complete)