Published April 2005

WPC project gives state’s
small businesses a voice

If every small-business owner in the state of Washington were to get on a Greyhound and head to Olympia during the legislative session, lawmakers would be deluged by a flood of humanity, as representatives of some 200,000 small firms journeyed to the state Capitol to have their voices heard.

But small-business owners tend to be very busy people whose time and budgets must, ultimately, be focused on keeping their enterprises healthy — despite legislative or regulatory impediments that would work to undermine their efforts.

These entrepreneurs must rely on others to be their voice when the Legislature gets under way, to speak out against legislation that could injure the state’s business climate — and their ability to succeed.

And in the past few years, the Washington Policy Center has stepped up its efforts to be such a voice, efforts that recently earned the nonprofit public policy research organization recognition from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy.

In March, the WPC was named one of 19 finalists for the Office of Advocacy’s Best Practices award for its Small Business Project, a four-year effort aimed at increasing the voice of small-business owners across Washington state.

Begun in the fall of 2001, the project has included a statewide series of roundtables, including one in Everett, designed to collect and prioritize barriers that small-business owners said they faced.

The result of that research, a report titled “The Small Business Climate in Washington State,” offered a comprehensive view of both the state’s strengths and weaknesses in developing and maintaining a healthy small-business environment.

The WPC followed up that research with its 2003 Statewide Small Business Conference that fall. Attended by more than 360 small-business owners across the state, the conference’s purpose was to find solutions to the business-climate problems already uncovered, focusing on areas such as workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance, the rising cost of health insurance, the tax burden and employment regulations. The WPC’s future plans include another such conference this fall.

Throughout the duration of the Small Business Project, WPC officials have testified before state legislative committees, offering their research findings as they pertain to issues facing Washington — and giving small-business owners across the state a unified voice in front of the movers and shakers that shape state policy.

“Nonprofit organizations play an important part in advancing entrepreneurship, and the Washington Policy Center is no exception,” said Connie Marshall, the SBA regional advocate for the Northwest region. “Using research as their tool, Washington Policy Center provides a voice to legislators and policymakers in Washington state. Their advocacy for small businesses has earned them this national recognition.”

In commenting on the honor, WPC President Daniel Mead Smith noted the cooperation his organization received — and the interest generated — along the way.

“Our project has been successful at highlighting the needs of an essential part of our overall economic system — as evidenced by the involvement of hundreds of small-business owners across the state and over 60 partners in this project, including every major chamber of commerce in this state,” he said.

Now, that may not have the same visual impact as thousands of entrepreneurs piling out of Greyhound buses on the steps of the Capitol, but in the end, the WPC, through its Small Business Project, is enabling the state’s small-business community to speak its piece.

— Kimberly Hilden, SCBJ Assistant Editor

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