Tools/Local Economy
Organizations
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE)
Building long-term economic empowerment and prosperity in communities through local business ownership, economic justice, cultural diversity and a healthy natural environment.
Co-op America is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1982. Their mission is to harness economic power—the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace—to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.
Our goal is to provide you with the web’s most comprehensive and up-to-date information resource on state-of-the-art strategies for democratic, community-based economic development
Ecotrust's Conservation Economy Framework
A framework for developing a conservation economy
The Home Town Advantage
Reviving Locally-Owned Business - From the New Rules Project
SectionZ
Chock-full of comics and fully footnoted, SectionZ presents the big ideas that are making our economy safe for people and nature. From January 2003 to April 2004, SectionZ ran as an addition to the usual newspaper sections A, B and C in San Francisco, Portland, and - with issue #6 - Seattle.
Abolish Corporate Personhood Organizing Packet: This organizing packet is designed to help you join with others to Abolish Corporate Personhood. This is an opportune time to build coalitions and public support in communities all over the country around the notion that only human beings should govern. Corporations have no “business” impersonating us!
Local Economy Community Initiatives
Grassroots Support for Locally Owned, Independent Businesses: Local First Utah is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the character of our community through promotion of locally owned, independent businesses.
Sustainable Connections
Sustainable Connections is a member-based business network establishing and supporting a local living economy that sustains itself, our community and a healthy environment.
Sustainable Business Network of Portland
The Sustainable Business Network of Portland (SBNP) is a nonprofit network of local triple-bottom-line businesses and social entrepreneurs. We believe that local businesses play a key role in shaping our community and making it a good place to live and work.
Sustainable Business Education
BGI is pioneering a graduate curriculum for sustainable business education that infuses social and environmental responsibility into every course – not just electives but all required courses as well. They train students with the leading sustainability case studies, best practices, models, and business management tools.
Green Mountain offers an accredited M.B.A. that emphasizes sustainable business practices. Their program reflects the growing trend among successful companies to focus on the triple bottom line, seeking competitive advantages through practices that are socially responsible and environmentally sound. Now offering an online, accredited distance learning MBA in Sustainable Business.
Articles
Local Living Economies: The New Movement for Responsible Business
By Judy Wicks,
President of the White Dog Cafe and
Co-Founder of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
Benefits of Doing Business Locally
Benefits to communities and citizens in patronizing local businesses
Buying Local and the Circulating Dollar
Often local business prices are lower than chain stores, and the money you spend there stays in the community.
Local Ownership Pays Off for Communities
Financial benefits to the community of locally-owned businesses
Top Ten reasons to Think Local - Buy Local - Be Local
From Sustainable Connections, Bellingham, Washington
Books
The Small-Mart Revolution
by Michael Shuman
Details dozens of specific strategies small and home-based businesses are using to successfully out-compete the world’s largest companies. And it shows how consumers, investors, policymakers, and organizers can effectively revitalize their own communities by supporting local businesses.
The Social Venture Network Series from Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Berrett-Koehler Publishers is partnering with Social Venture Network (SVN) to publish a series of down-to-earth paperback guides that will walk readers through the practical steps of starting and growing a socially responsible business. This series represents the merger of the Berrett-Koehler mission of “Creating a World That Works for All” and Social Venture Network’s commitment to building a
just and sustainable world through business. Books include: Values-Driven Business by Ben Cohen and Mal Warwick; True to Yourself by Mark Albion; Marketing that Matters by Chip Conley and Eric Friedenwald-Fishman; and Growing Local Value by Laury Hammel and Gun Denhart.