Credit unions and small businesses like are cooperatives
Bendfeldt, Eric
Dear Shenandoah Valley Food and Farm Network colleagues:
As we try to initiate and incubate small and mid-sized businesses around local and regional foods and the infrastructure needed to support these efforts like food hubs, aggregation centers, value-added processing facilities, access to capital has been identified as a limiting factor for farmers and food-based entrepreneurs. In many communities throughout the Valley and Virginia, credit unions have worked with local small and mid-sized businesses with similar cooperative-based values to get started and assist with financing.
The Friendly City Food Cooperative is an example of a local business that recently worked closely with a local credit union (Park View Federal Credit Union) to access capital for financing the establishment of a full-service grocery store in downtown Harrisonburg. Since we are all interested in local and national economic recovery, you might be interested in and want to learn about the Credit Union Small Business Jobs Bill (S. 2231) that is being considered for legislation. The proposed legislation would raise the credit union member business lending cap from 12% to 27.4% of a credit union’s overall assets. Increasing the lending cap would help many small and mid-sized businesses that are members of credit unions gain access to the capital and credit they need for start-ups, expansion and hiring.
It is estimated that the passage of this bill would create approximately 5,000 new jobs in Virginia and close to 140,000 jobs nationwide. If you are interested local small business development and in having a voice in this matter, you might want contact to Virginia’s senators.
Senator Jim Webb
3140 Chaparral Drive
Building C, Suite 101
Roanoke, Virginia 24018
Senator Mark Warner
129B Salem Ave., SW
Roanoke, VA 24011
Please share or disregard as you see fit.
Best regards,
Eric
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Eric S. Bendfeldt
Extension Specialist, Community Viability
Virginia Cooperative Extension
2322 Blue Stone Hills Drive, Suite 140
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22801
Phone: (540) 432-6029 Ext. 106 Cell: (540) 209-4705
Fax: (540) 432-6251
Email: eben...@vt.edu
Serving the Commonwealth of Virginia
"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed
in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope."
~ Winston Churchill
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