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welcome everyone to today's program presented by Main Street America on supporting local safely through the coated 19 crisis my name is Kelly Hamrick Hauser I'm the manager of education at Main Street America for forward again I want to take a moment to ensure that everyone in the audience can participate in the webinar platform if you are if you are new to the GoToWebinar platform you are muted automatically you may use either telephone or computer audio you can control your choice under the audio section on your control panel we welcome you to submit your questions or comments at any time using the question function on your control panel if we are unable to address all questions during today's program we encourage you to email us at Main Street at saving places org so we can get back to you and I do want to note that we have it to pass the audience today if you happen to log out there may be a possibility they wouldn't be able to log back in but this is recorded and we will get that out to you barring any technical difficulties within about 24 hours so today REM has two main components first we'll hear an update from Holly waves National Federation of Independent businesses on the impacts of the Cova 19 crisis on small businesses and the main packages of support that have passed through Congress and what those might mean for you then we'll have a few minutes of questions for Holly immediately following her presentation and in the second part of our program we'll hear from three incredible local Main Street executive directors on their experiences and best practices in responding to the Kogan 19 crisis to support their local economy obviously just weeks ago we never thought we would have been in this situation but I want to ensure assure you that Main Street America is here with you to help identify resources and for your community to navigate this crisis you can find a growing list of resources on our web site at Main Street org slash coded 19 resources this list is updated daily I want to give a moment of recognition to our incredible communications team at Main Street America who are doing just amazing job of organizing and sharing information as quickly as possible and I'd like to remind you that we do have a webinar scheduled for next week on Tuesday March 31st while today's program is about local businesses next week we'll focus on Main Street programs and how to manage your organization at the we'll be talking about your cash flow your work plans so that you can stay strong to keep supporting local so without further ado I'll turn the presentation over to Holly Wade director of research and policy analysis for the National Federation of Independent businesses NFIB is the largest Small Business Association in the country and Holly provides analysis and public policy issues and economic trends affecting small businesses Holly our sincere thanks for joining us today and welcome to the Main Street America Network I'm going to give you controlled the slides right now great thank you it's great to be with everybody during these trying times for small businesses the National Federation of Independent Business is the largest advocacy Association for small firms we represent roughly 300,000 small businesses across the country spanning all industries and most sites demographics under under 500 roughly a few over 500 but mostly 500 less than 500 most of our members are employers and about 80% of them are under 40 employees with the average small business around 4 to 5 employees so most of our members are certainly small businesses across the country and we've we've done a number of things for looking at the Cova 19 outbreak and how it's impacting small firms and I wanted to go through some of these and let's see here I'm not able to afford the slides I don't think um so March 10th we sent out a survey of small firms an email survey asking them about their in the impact of the outbreak on their business and we repeated this survey March 20th that so there's a tenday difference between both surveys that asked the same questions and the results were markedly different and highlights the dramatic escalating impact that the outbreak has had on small firms so back in March 10th which seems like an eternity ago when we surveyed our members about 74 percent of them three-quarters of them said that they were not currently impacted by the outbreak um about a quarter of them said negatively and about three percent said positively so those that said positively and you can imagine say the grocery store or those who are in manufacturing that are manufacturing goods that are in high demand right now ten days later we repeated the survey and only one in five said that they weren't currently impacted and about over three-quarters said that they were negatively impacted so just in the course of ten days we saw a striking excess collation in the severity of the outbreak and how it's impacting small businesses we also asked if they weren't currently impacted if they anticipated being impacted if the outbreak spread in their area or was spread more broadly and in our in March tenth survey about forty three percent said that they thought they would be impacted if the corona virus outbreak spread but now virtually everybody believes that if the virus spreads to their area or more broadly in their area that they will be negatively impacted and so even those who aren't currently impacted believe that they will be if this continues how concerned are they about the spread impacting their business only 16% March when we surveyed on March 10th said that they were very concerned and that increased dramatically to 68 percent March 12 20th saying that they were very concerned so very few small firms are not concerned about the outbreak and how it's impacting their business not concerned at all it's just now one percent saying that they're not concerned about the outbreak so most small businesses are very concerned about how this is impacting their business the economic disruptions in their area and slower sales chain supply chain disruptions these are all the main factors that are impacting them and also having to navigate their their employees their workforce and making sure that they if they can stay open that their workforce remains healthy and protected from the virus too to keep operations going many are scaling back and adjusting to their new reality if they haven't closed already temporarily many are are scaling down business operations or adjusting business operations and so having to navigate that it's becoming increasingly stressful for small business owners we continue to receive calls from our members and emails from our members relating these stresses and and asking questions about how to navigate going forward so the federal response to kovat 19 not surprisingly has escalated over the course of three weeks the phase one effort in providing some relief to health care or health care industry but also there was a provision that increased funding for the Small Business Administration's economic injury disaster loan program and allocated seven billion dollars more in funding for that program and the funding was was certainly helpful and unfortunately the loans the economic injury disaster loan program is facilitated within the SBA and they were overwhelmed by calls and also governor's had to certify area their state or areas within their state that they that they could access this loan program so it was it was a there were a few bottlenecks in in small business owners accessing this loan program and so and if IBM any others advocated to expand the program beyond the SVA and because of the severity of the the economic disruptions that were happening in the small business sector and which I'll cover in Phase three but moving to phase two the provisions that impacted small firms in Phase two included the emergency paid sick leave the expanded FMLA the refundable tax credit and the hardship exemption so there's two different leave mandates that were included in the phase two legislation that was passed and signed into law last Wednesday the emergency paid sick leave is ten days of paid leave and that all employers under five hundred employees are required to give their their employees their workers who qualify for this leave so they if they are sick and present symptoms of kovat 19 if they have a child who is sick with koban 19 I have to take care of a child so there are a few provisions that employees can access this emergency paid sick leave and all businesses all employers under 500 are required to to give this emergency paid sick leave there is also the expanded FMLA so one to ten days is is covered by the emergency paid sick leave day 11 through 12 weeks is covered by the expanded FMLA leave the expanded FMLA includes 12 weeks that again is required by all employers under 500 employees to have this available they are in compensated or you can they can access the refundable credits credits that are against payroll taxes to help defray some of this cost that goes towards FMLA and the emergency paid sick leave and that's available to small businesses and certainly we understand the cash flow issues around some small businesses that might not be able to bridge this but that is available and they're trying to expedite the ability to access these refundable tax credits as quickly as possible so that they're to negate as much disruption in in paying those employees who who are taking the paid sick leave or the expanded FMLA so the to leave mandates go into effect April 1st so as of April 1st going forward through the end of the year businesses are required to pay for the emergency paid sick leave and the expanded FMO highlight this also includes those who have to leave they've already paid for that they've already paid before April 1st if there is another occurrence with the same employee this still kicks in and they are still required to wait they are still under obligation for these 10 days of paid leave in the 12 days 12 weeks of paid FMLA there is a hardship exemption for employers with less than 50 employees and all of this can be accessed the details of this can be accessed on the Department of Labor's website and I have the links on I believe the last slide that you can access and they offer some better explanations and and some guidance on how to access the tax credits well the tax credits are actually from the IRS but they have a link to the IRS website for the tax credits and then they also have a guidance for the hardship exemption of less than 50 for those with less than 50 employees and the hardship exemption is just for portions of the emergency paid sick leave even that expanded FMLA so it's not to exempt employers of everything but there are certain aspects of the mandates that you can be that employers can be exempt if it is a particular for them in paying the the 10 days or the 12 weeks weeks expanded FMLA for phase 3 this is the negotiated legislation that was passed in the Senate late last night and will go to the house and the house is expected to vote on Friday tomorrow and hopefully that goes quickly and if it passes the house then it is assumed that the president will sign it in short order small business small businesses are obviously eager to better understand what might be available to them the members that we've talked to that have called or emailed us this is their biggest ask is a cash infusion into their business to bridge the gap of economic disruption that they're facing to hold on to the employees that are still working in their business and to help defray some of the costs with say health benefits utility costs mortgages things like that so this is of particular interest to to most small businesses the paychecks protections program or loans and/or we've shortened it to the SBA coronavirus small business loan program but it will be a program that has funding allocated with about 350 billion dollars worth of funding for this program the program will be facilitated through deposited deposit financial institutions so your large banks independent banks they will be able to facilitate these loans and expand the availability outside of the SBA which will be helpful in quickly disseminating these funds to small business owners so the criteria for accessing the loan program is that you have to have been in business as of February 15th 2020 there is no personal or business guarantee for accessing these loans and the loans are a hundred percent guaranteed backed by the SBA and and up to eight weeks of the the first eight weeks of using the loan the loan that you qualify for is forgivable in most circumstances so for the first eight weeks two months of using the loan for business expenses from the day you receive the loan eight weeks forward all the expenses including payroll benefits any sort of compensation expenses utilities mortgage interest not the principle but the mortgage interest payments any past debt obligations that you have that you're continuing to pay through February 15th those are forgivable expenses for the first eight weeks after the you can use the loan money up to four expenses up to June 30th 2020 and so the first eight weeks of most expenses are forgivable and you are able to use the money that you receive from this loan program up to June 30th 2020 the payments are deferred and interest on these loans are deferred for six months up to twelve months that's still a bit unclear how that's going to work but there is no penalty for prepayment of these loans so if you prepay as we're assuming through the language that is in the bill as of now we're assuming that up to six months until the interest of the loan picks in you are able to prepay the rest of the loan and and not pay interest on that so there is up to ten years of paying back the loan of the expenses that were a crew or that you paid or the loan amount that you used up to June 30th you have ten years to pay that back and a max interest rate of 4% but there are no prepay penalties associated with it and a six month payment deferment I also wanted to note there is a emergency cash advance for lack of a better term of ten thousand dollars so a small business owner can apply for the loan and ask for the advance $10,000 advance upfront and that is forgivable part of the loan well they're calling it the $10,000 upfront grant that is available to small business owners if they qualify for the loan it is it the $10,000 would be included in the forgivable part of loan forgiveness of the loan but if you end up not qualifying for the loan the $10,000 is just forgiven the only penalty is that you have to certify under perjury that you believed you could qualify for the loan and so that's that's it you know it's $10,000 up front to to help defer payments as the the loan process which I believe will take you know it will be a quick process going through the large bank or the bank system instead of the SBA but $10,000 up front can be accessed but small business owners have to ask for it so I spent a lot of time on phase three that's the one of interest for folks but the next two slides are just tools and tips of how business owners what they might consider in communicating with their employees these are some good takeaways for when you talk to small business owners across the country that are experiencing economic disruptions more like a checklist that would be available to them and then here's our resource guide we are continually updating the NFIB Cova 19 resource page but here are also some links to the Department of Labor guidance there question and answer section which is very helpful and then the IRS page on the refundable tax credit for paid leave mandates so I will end there and happy to take any questions thank you wow thank you so much Holly that was a really really helpful and a great overview of what's been happening so far we do have a few questions lined up and I think some were addressed while you were talking but I do want to just start with like the most upfront question I think everybody is on everybody's mind we just addressed it a little bit but we could probably speak to it a little bit more how do you bridge the cash flow issue you know just in this moment you know before may
e that $10,000 grant even gets to you are there other resources that you could point to sure we are encouraging our members to talk with their local bank small business loan officer or another representative in their bank if there isn't to a designated small business loan officer to see what type of resources are available to them there are many banks that are becoming more flexible in in helping small business owners even accessing you know credit cards for a small bridge I mean small business owners you know do this as a regular business practice but that is also an option to bridge that gap the loans when they are available to small businesses the debts that they're incurring they can use this loan to cover debt so that will be helpful in whatever they pursue in the meantime because obviously the loans you know this program is going to take a little bit even if everything is passed and signed into law on Friday it will take a little bit of time to get up and running so talking to their local bank for available options would be helpful and just also to mention if they have a SBA disaster loan already they can refinance that loan to this new program so those who have already taken out a disaster assistance loan for covin 19 can refinance their loan to to one of these loans and that will be helpful in allowing them the eight weeks of forgivable loan loan that they use for those two months of expenses and this a loan program as we understand it now they can access the new loan program on top of the 7a loan program so the 7a loan program because it wasn't specific to the coronavirus they can they can continue that loan with this loan on top of it but talking to their financial institutions their bank any other financial institution that they use is encouraged and and can be incredibly helpful resource for them excellent thank you so much I want to you know getting a lot of requests for me to flip back and I did move from that slide maybe too quickly so let's flip to the resources page once again please note sorry my slides are one slide moment behind what you guys do think this research page should pop up just in a second here for you we will share this with you please you don't have to write every link right here down we will share this out to you but if you want to just take on some information off the top here that is a possibility for you I wanted to just touch back Holly also on the provisions for businesses of under 50 employees we had a couple of questions you know that XML a does not apply to employers with less than 50 employees and how is the FMLA we being handled for those employers and just to clarify I think the exemption that you mentioned earlier for those smallest of businesses for phase 2 specifically if we could clarify that a little bit more sure so the emergency paid sick leave mandate and the expanded FMLA provisions apply to all employers under 500 so all employers under 500 are required to required under these two mandates to offer the 10 day paid leave mergency sick leave and the expanded FMLA the exemption for those under 50 for economic hardship reasons and those are outlined in the deal the DOL guidance and it doesn't I don't believe it covers all of the cost for the sick leave or sorry not cover the cost but it doesn't exclude all of the provisions in the mandate it excludes some of the provisions in the mandate as I recall but check the deal well guidance on this and just also to note that the law does require all employers under 500 to post posters for both the emergency sick leave provision and the expanded FMLA there are two posters that you can access on the Department of Labor's website in the link provided that you had that small business or small employers have to post in a common area so all employees can have access and read about what's available to them so those two posters are required that's excellent to know I'm going to flip forward again in your slides to what the what small businesses can be doing now we had a couple of questions also just keeping this up in the background I just want to clarify again between phase 1 and phase 3 we have had a couple of questions around what businesses should be doing or could be doing if you didn't apply applies with phase one should you wait to apply some phase three you said you could refinance phase that pays one and how does that work relative to Phase three sure so the phase with the disaster relief program the Cova disaster relief program that's facilitated through the SBA those loans if you if a business owner has one of those loans they can refinance to take advantage of the loans offered in the new program so you know that's going to create a bit of paperwork on the business owner to do that and a bit of time but if they need to access the loan program immediately that is one way to go about it is to ACTU to get one of the disaster relief loans and then refine it if they can wait it's certainly helpful in reducing the paperwork burden of it and and going through the process when these are available which hopefully will be relatively soon since they will be facilitated through commercial banks and so the speed of which they can access the loan program through commercial banks should be quicker than through the SBA and then also they will the $10,000 emergency grant will be available so within just a couple days they should be able to access $10,000 up front through this program so if they can stretch it a little bit might be beneficial to wait for this program but if not accessing the disaster relief loan program and then refinancing might be their best bet Thank You Holly we're going to take one more question now before we move on to our panel of Main Street folks and we can again come back to some questions at the end of the program and also we will be taking your questions at Main Street America and we can try to facilitate the answers as best as possible with Holly and ensive going forward so just want to there's several questions that have come in around relief for Souls the purpose sole proprietors and self-employed folks is there something for those folks at part of phase three of this yes so good questions the loan program is available for sole proprietors and in and independent contractors so the loan program is available to all small businesses not just employers so this was a big expansion of the previous drafts I think there were I feel like there were about 50,000 drafts of this legislation of two trillion dollars but that was one of the benefits for the small business sector as is that the loan program is it was expanded to sole proprietors and independent contractors those small businesses without any employees to help them pay for business expenses and lost wages and earnings themselves excellent Holly thank you so much for clarifying that we do have more questions kind of coming in but we do want to one share Hollies contact information here we are so glad Holly for you to be here today to provide us with this information and to share your information I want to ask our audience to be you know kind to Holly in terms of if you have some questions we will be publishing more information from Main Street America and also nfid has a whole section of kovat resources on their site there are recorded webinars that they did as we recently as Friday and I'm sure that they'll keep producing more as well so I'm going to encourage you to take a look at those resources before calling Holly but thank you thank you so much Holly any kind of final words you want to add before we flip to the next part of our program I'm just encourage everybody to talk with the small business owners in your area the the loan program is will likely be a bit arduous to navigate and as best as we can get the word out that this is available to small business owners and provide them with the information to get them access to this to this program them you know the better to help small business owners across the country ease the economic disruptions that they're facing but you know it's it's almost uncommon to all of us to make sure that they know that this resources is available to them when it's up and running and signed into law you know and Holly I apologize I do want to ask one more quick question of you because one of our panelists have asked me and I just want to make sure that we get this in are these resources available to 501 C 3s as well as small businesses I believe so I don't know for sure but I believe 501 C 3s are included in the relief package for this loan program and we will we're updating our site the NFIB com website the Cova 19 resource page with the updated and firm that's included in the legislation soon maybe tomorrow but certainly by Monday and it will have all of those categories of businesses that are included and and able to access the loan program excellent excellent so everybody will be able to access that resource as well as we'll link to it from the Main Street America website so thank you again so much Holly and now we're going to move on to the next part of our program where we are oh I have another slide for questions there we've already done that okay we are going to talk now about the efforts that Main Street America members have made to support local safely we know that so many of you out there are in a position of not not only potentially being small business owners yourselves but also working with a whole network and district full of small business owners so we're so glad today to have three Main Street executive directors with us to share their experiences and we're going to hear from them a little bit about what they're doing and you know I'm sure much like you these folks have been working extremely long days and long hours to do this I'm so so grateful to them for giving their time today and first in that panel we're going to hear from Andrea Dona executive director of Harrisonburg downtown it's located in Virginia Andrea welcome and thank you for being here thanks Kelly yeah so Harrisonburg is about two hours southwest of Washington DC where a population of about 55,000 but really 20,000 Nevada students who are not here right now for the most part so we've been struggling with the downturn and I'd love to talk a little bit more about what we've been doing but first I wanted to mention that I don't know much about the recent bill that might be voted on by the house today but the SBA loans are available for nonprofits and churches for 2.7 percent for a 30-year term um thanks ollie and so I wanted to just start by saying that my board got together right when things started but right before we had our first confirmed case and I have to say that once we had our first confirmed case while things might have started slowing down it was visible that fewer people were coming down three days after the first confirmed case it was like everything changed so I just wanted to warn you all to be prepared as possible because things will change daily sometimes by the hour and how people respond and how they interact with your small businesses and your organization is going to change very quickly so what we did first is we've decided that we're gonna set our our goals and our outline for how we're gonna handle our messaging in our response and everything going forward first and foremost we're here to protect public health and second obviously is to maintain the economic viability of our downtown and then certainly we want to protect our organization as well this has really helped us keep focused and prevent mission creep because as a community leader we've been getting a lot of questions oh can you do this can you help us with that can you raise funds for workers who were out of work which my treasurer was like stay far away from that but community members could take that up and a lot of them have so it's really helped us stay focused we also spent a lot of time focusing on communication and I think the lucky thing about being part of a downtown is that you have a Main Street program that has emails and phone numbers and a direct line to businesses that very much need information and they need support and you're gonna have to be there Rock and so I've given them so much information I've been emailing them probably every other day giving them you know bright spots of hope and telling them where your grants and loans are coming from what partnerships were forming in the community how they can help their staff ideas from what others are doing around the country so we've been sending all that information to them and I have an example on our website if you go to downtown Harrisonburg org you can't miss it we have a whole kovin section and one of them includes a small business resource page and on there is an example of what are those emails look like and so we ask people if they're not on our list that they can go ahead and email me to subscribe we also surveyed our businesses and customers pretty quickly out of the gate I only had about eight businesses responds but they're scrambling and I don't expect them to be doing a survey so I've been connecting with them in other ways directly the customers though they really wanted to share we had about 500 responses and we asked all kinds of things that we thought the businesses might want to know as they make adjustments you know do they want to hear that they're disinfecting every hour on the hour or they're wearing gloves when they bring out pick up items to the curbside so that stuff has been helpful for them we're happy that were able to share it the other thing that we did was have a online roundup of what's going on around downtown so for all the businesses that are closing or they're sorry I'm trying to advance my slide and I can't seem to get it there give that brief thank you here's just a screenshot of what we did so we created a chart for different business types restaurants retail yoga studios basically everybody that we had downtown we posted online and showed in a really quick and easy way are they open can you order online do they have an online store and we had over 45,000 engagement 45,000 people reached in 10,000 people engaged which was really huge for us and people just really loved it the business owners loved it and it was a one-stop shop for people to figure out how they can still support local safely we also found that in a really quick way a lot of businesses that were able started offering gift cards for sale if they never did before and also launched online stores they started doing delivery and all kinds of things online yoga classes online classes anything they could do to be um still viable um kind of the next slide we also had a very quick convening virtually of the economic development players in our region so this included my organization the regional partnership the tech council our SBDC who's also helping people fill out those SBA loans so you might look to them as a resource for your businesses our Chamber of Commerce and also the city and county economic development we all got together just to get on the same page to figure out what is our messaging how can we help can we have one single page of resources for all of them that way we're not all creating the same thing we had a video that we produced pretty much by the end of the week working with a local video production company to have a buy local set up shop local safely message that you know as community leaders we were able to get out there pretty quickly and have it go viral which again people really appreciated um it was really helpful for us to have that partnership we now meet weekly and we also were able my organization raised $50,000 from a local bank that we're hoping to leverage from other local banks for grants up to $5,000 for small businesses so that's coming out of this partnership but we're doing on the legwork for the fundraising we also like everyone else is doing the campaigns to get people to think about you know you're still you just ill need to shop local as much as you can safely and one way you can do it is through gift cards or online ordering and we're calling it everyday hva encouraging people to keep their routines it just will look a little bit different and we're going to be awarding a hundred dollars worth of
ift cards at a business of their choice thanks to a local sponsor so we're trying to keep that going to you and the last slide um I think I went over but I'm just going to briefly say that we partnered up with a local brewery and Cisco cuz they have a warehouse near us and we have 40 restaurants and breweries in our downtown so all those people lost their jobs or had their hours significantly cut and so because there's such a strong network among them the brewery really wanted to have a non-profit partner so they can accept a food donation from Cisco so they can create a pop-up pantry just for the restaurant workers and that has been huge for them some of these people aren't eligible for USDA sponsored food banks because they are recently unemployed so this was a huge help for our community and something that we were happy to be a partner on and yeah just lastly the last one I'm just gonna stop here there's a bunch of different things that your businesses are going to be innovative and quick to be innovative for so the most help that you can give them to get there is is gonna be great and they're really gonna look to you and and this is our time to shine that's it for me thanks Andrea one clarifying question just to give people context what is the current state of status in Virginia at around Harrisonburg relative to the virus that are you in a mandated lockdown not exactly our Virginia does not allow the restaurants to have their dining rooms open but non non-essential retail can still operate as long as there's not more than 10 people in there at a time ok excellent to know we're going to move to our next presenter now to hear from Donnie Rogers the executive director of downtown Lee's Summit some of you may have been to Lee's Summit as the location of the big bash at the national Main Street conference in 2018 Donnie as discussed I'm going to give you the screen now all right you can you feeling my web site is that what you're seeing on your screen absolutely great yeah so Lee's Summit Missouri we're right outside Kansas City so we're part of a major Metro Lee Summit is very much a suburban community we're close to a hundred thousand in population and so we're kind of a unique situation our downtown is rather small though we're about ten blocks and so being part of a larger Metro a lot of the decision-making on our response has been coming from Kansas City in partnership with the counties surrounding the Metro and so it's kind of been a united decision making and everything that's in the last few weeks has been very rapid I would say about right now as of Tuesday were under a stay at home order so that effectively shut down all non-essential businesses and so right now our restaurants are still working from essential service and being able to offer delivery and carry out with those safe guidelines intact this has all happened like Andrea said very quickly you know as of last week I would say you know we had canceled our Emerald Isle parade that was I'm gonna be planned for the 14th of March due to weather concerns at first and then it was the code 19 then suddenly things started changing very quickly we were first to first told no major events in the community for the next two months that went to no more than ten people gathering by Monday night March 16th we were told the restaurants had to close down but so the night before our st. Patrick's Day one of the biggest days for bars and restaurants we were told no more Dinan service everyone was gonna have to go to carry out or delivery and so that's kind of where we mo um got together and started looking at what we can do to help supportive businesses and so well have our efforts launched then on st. Patrick's Day that March 17th which traditionally is one of the busiest days for our downtown it was important for us really to keep a positive message and so with that you're looking on your screen here you can see our website at the top of the website there's a link that says you know find out the latest on how you can support local during tilted 19 our whole mission going into this was looking at love local and so we tried to keep that positive message there we developed a page on our website that lists out all the different ways you can support we've done quite a few graphics and everything and as of this morning we've actually created a page where you can go in and download those graphics as a local business to help share that information but we it was important for us to create a business directory that kind of brought together all that information it is one of those things where we're updating constantly it was one of those things I didn't want to do a print piece or anything knowing like last week every night I would go home and in the middle of the night some major decision would come down from our our County and Kansas City on what we can and cannot do and so it was an ever-evolving thing and so website for us was the most easy thing to come come forward with you can see our restaurants are really working hard to make carryout possible our retailers are starting to shift to more of online focus since their doors effectively as of Tuesday this week had to be closed and so they're getting really creative but this was a resource that we put together that we really wanted to be able to give people the opportunity water stores offering can you get a gift card where can I find the best information as we know a lot of people aren't great about updating their websites and we've linked to a lot of their social media just to give people the idea where can I find the most recent information and that link that was on the top of our love local page takes you to these graphics and so you can kind of see we've created a group of graphics to send out we actually got this idea from the National Main Street Center the first day I think on March 16th I saw an image come out giving ideas of how to support your local economy and so we've taken that idea and ran with it and so you can kind of see if you want to go to our website all of these are up there posted and we'll be sharing these out on our social media channels coming forward our farmers market is something that we're also working on trying to get people on realize I've run through some time here so depending on where you're at Kansas City has declared their farmers markets essential services we're in Jackson County Eastern Jackson County and as of right now they have declared farmers markets as special events and so our farmers market is actually closed until mid-may is what we've been told and so we've done something similar with our farmers markets and creating a page on our website to show how you can reach out to these vendors directly and offer delivery and pickup service and everything so we're trying to create those opportunities that resource for people to know that there is still ways to work with small businesses and small business owners like our farmers and so just real quickly here you can see this is an example that post on our social media and it's just we're constantly trying to stay positive and trying to share that information and Instagram is the same way we created a post where people can kind of help share Naing you know she loves to tell us five businesses you've you love in downtown and so that resources in that folder you can kind of see there people are tagging businesses and offering that extra support so and real quick one of the easiest ways for us to communicate with our businesses is via email and with that love local page I showed you we created a form to get our businesses to share or to fill out their information that's been the easiest way for us to do a form-based we used Lulu Forms to do that but it's one of those things where it keeps all that information in one location for me because we have over 40 businesses listed currently on our website about what they're getting currently and if I was getting an individual email from each one of those on top of the other things we're getting daily it would just be and that's to manage so I just wanted to share that and look forward to questions here in a bit Thank You Johnny so we will address those questions as they're coming in towards the end of our presentation here right now I'm going to take back the screen from Donnie and so we can give it to Kyle Meyer who is our final panelist today Kyle whoops sorry one second too sweet kyle is the executive director of Rhode Island Avenue Northeast Main Street in Washington DC Kyle tell us what's happening in Washington DC right now we are we're not on an official lockdown but all essential businesses are closed we were lucky that our farmers markets are considered essential so we've got that going on for us restaurants are allowed to do takeout and delivery only at this point we we are waiting in any any moment now to have a full lockdown come around I don't know if that'll actually happen bus services Metro services have been shut down and you know named every day is a new day it's it's a it's a little bit of whiplash every day we wake up and and have new challenges so we are very lucky to be one of 24 Main streets under the DC Main streets program we have a tremendous amount of support and resources from the DC government in our fellow Main Street directors here so I can share with you some of the things that we've done immediately and I also want to take the opportunity to share at the end what what some new things are that are happening and actually Kelly do you mind moving that slide I can't three go there we go thank you so the first thing we did we knew there were going to be a bunch of resources coming out and we didn't know what those resources were going to be exactly whether they were federal local changes to our grant agreements on what we could do so the first thing we did was set up an assistance request form on our website just a very basic Google form very basic questions we do manage to Main Street programs the Rhode Island Avenue Northeast and Bladensburg Road Main streets and we've got some some additional grants that aren't necessarily Main Street grants that allow us to help some some surrounding businesses so we tried to address all of those areas and and get all that information in one place we've obviously been inundated in with requests and we we weren't even sure but what businesses are going to need from us so rather than us telling them what we had available for them in the way of resources we we were asking them to tell us what they needed some cases the answer is we don't know what we need so then we can come in with our suggestions the next thing we did if you want to move that along we have a podcast that we we do on a regular basis first thing we did on c march 13th was an episode featuring Sarah Gibson of 20 degrees talking about some basic resiliency for businesses some of the things that they can do right away and one of the things that she suggested cannot recommend it enough is that the businesses communicate fully and completely with with their constituents and customers but we may Rhode Island have a new radio available on our website it's available through iTunes we will be updating with future episodes with nothing but things about unemployment things about SBA loans etc and then the next thing we are in cry I am incredibly lucky in that I've got some very tech tech-savvy staff and so they harnessed the power of Google Maps and put color-coded pins on on the map based on the the Main Street program that they're on this is all on our website by the way our ia Main Street o RG and go onto the next slide you can see when you click the pins a pop up window comes up that gives the current businesses operating status any any additional contact information if they're doing takeout carry out and we gave editing rights to all of the businesses for their listing on on this google map so they can update this on their own this is on our website this has been shared out on social media the businesses have been sharing it so it's a real really nice interactive tool for the customers in the area to be able to see what's going on with their favorite businesses and on the next slide oh well that's it I know some things that have happened in but in but since I've made these slides and gave them to Kelly yesterday we have a company called rebel scooters and it's actually electric mopeds that operates here they are donating free use of the electric mopeds to restaurants in the area and and small grocers to allow them some some free access to transportation for delivery of takeout or groceries this is a great partnership that rebel scooters is offering can't thank them enough for that we also found out that the district Department of Transportation will be working with each of the Main Street programs to set up designated curbside pickup areas so where we have a lot of on street parking that's metered heavily and and DDOT will be working with us to create some designated curbside pickup zone so super excited about that another thing particularly for those of you who are part of statewide or large city Main Street programs we have set up a slack channel with our other DC Main Street partners to be able to have some instant communication and ongoing discussions about tips and and resources and best practices for the things that we are able to provide for our businesses here in DC so that's what we've got going on thank you so much Kyle and thank you to all of our presenters for being here today taking the time making slides yesterday that need updated today that that's how we're moving through life right now um so we do have time for Question and Answer the program is scheduled for another 15 minutes so I'm going to go back to the questions pane and be looking for some of your questions Holly from encode is still here with us so if there's some things that kind of overlap both kind of that hyperlocal and then the federal we'll get to both of those during this time I also want to say that for some of our questions that are coming in that are hyper specific to you know if we don't get to all of them but you have a question that's specifically for Donnie that you enter here I will do the do the job of following up with our presenters and creating a document that kind of lists out our questions and kind of gives the quick answers that they can give to how to do this best so you know from their experience and also we appreciate your comments that are coming in - some people are just suggesting some other best practices and you know a you know for restaurants to offering to deliver lunches to employees that are essential that's great stuff so keep sending it in one question for all of our panelists kind of off the top here what are you specifically seeing or doing to make the public feel comfortable with the safety of still visiting businesses where possible or to do takeout from restaurants to ensure that safety is being prioritized there well I can say for Rhode Island Avenue clientele we are our neighbors are highly engaged with the businesses here particularly on social media and so we're encouraging all of our businesses to to share their sanitation and safety practices on their social media we've got a coffee shop that is just you know from day one been on it as far as is what they're doing to keep their clients and customers safe and so we're just we're just encouraging businesses to be the ones that are delivering that information about safety precautions and procedures in in their businesses I would echo dad I be is recommending to our members who are still in business that to keep constant communication with their client base with their customers through social media through email on in their business fliers to talk about the steps that they're taking to protect their customers and to protect their employees and steps that they are taking in making sure that you know they're protecting you know again both are their customers and their employees so a good question in follow-up for Holly and then we can we're going to turn this into a question for panels as well for phase three as you discussed before if you're not open for business right now in order to pay rent insurances that are a still eligible for for phase
three if you've already kind of shuddered your doors that we temporarily yes it appears that if you were in business as of February 15 2020 but have temporarily closed and you still are incurring expenses that are difficult to pay obviously that's not a stretch if if you don't have any sales coming through the front door and you still have expenses you are eligible for the loan program and then for our main streets out there for our panelists any tips or suggestions if you have any experience with a business that has closed their doors or folks that are in a complete shelter in place and unable to access businesses about staying connected with those businesses are supporting them even if they're not open right now at all yeah we've done a a retailer zoom call in the last few weeks and so just kind of an opportunity to for everyone to pop on technology can be a little challenging for some of us but it's been good just to see that face to face we are in a stay at home a shelter-in-place order but that still means I can I can walk around and walk the dogs and this is downtown resident there's been a lot of window visits I would say and just making myself around downtown to make sure that you know I mean it's a time of uncertainty and so I think anytime we can offer opportunities for online chats video chats and stuff like that I think it's been beneficial I know I've always felt better after I've been able to communicate with someone excellent we do have some questions coming in that are a little bit specific so Andrea just wondering about the Harrisonburg loan program did you already have a relationship with that bank or how was that initiated the loan program that we have is actually through the city and HDR has nothing to do with that in particular the city took their funds for their startup program and pivoted so it could become a relief program the program that I was mentioning was a grant program actually so it's not alone and this is a bank that's actually not downtown but the bank president lives downtown his dogs and my dogs played together so you know those personal connections really a huge difference one of my board members banks with him he owns three businesses downtown and went there to do some you know have conversations about the existing loans he has with them and then he put the HDR hat on and said you know hey can you go talk with Andrea and can we see about creating some sort of program for relief and could it be grants and the guy was like let me get on the phone with corporate and by the next day they had $50,000 which was more than what we were looking for and because we're part of a task force with the regional economic development folks that money is going to be shared with the city in the county so and to know but we're gonna use basically the same parameters for the loan that the loan program so we'll have a similar application thanks Andrea a couple of questions coming in about survey tools that folks are using we should we shared a couple of different examples in answer shared she did a survey Donny has completed has a forum online for businesses Kyle's also has a survey up for businesses what digital tools are you guys finding the most helpful right now Google Forms yeah I got a with Google forums I mean the the simpler the better it it automatically dumps data into a spreadsheet obviously there's other platforms like wufu or Survey Monkey we we were going for quick and easy and in Google Forms was it for us yeah I'm worried we used Survey Monkey in gufu part of the reason why we use with room is we use it for other times a year for payments for events and applications and stuff and so it's just what was worked best for us with that and communication needs then touching back to Holly the business of Business Survey that you all are conducting how frequently is that being done and can our members look there for updates yes so our first survey part 1 was conducted March 10th the second survey was March 20th and we are sending out another survey to a random sample of our membership on Monday it will have a few new questions on there whether they're going to or whether they're likely to apply for the new loan program and how the the amount of the loan that they will that they think they need to for expenses through June 30th and and then and a few others about the how they've talked with their customers and and financial institutions in their area but basically similar questions and also on Monday we are conducting a third webinar that I will be participating in with a co-worker in our legal center who will talk more about the FMLA that expanded FMLA and the emergency sick leave mandate provisions and what's required of employers and and then our lobbyist Kevin Coleman will talk about just a 30,000 foot view of the process of the legislation going through potential phase four phase five who knows how many phases they'll be but what we can expect going forward so we will have a webinar available likely to the public if you're not able to register for the Monday webinar but it will be posted on our website hopefully by Tuesday excellent wonderful just another question for our managers coming in you know Emily out there is noting you know bars are suffering I know you know that was one area where we can't necessarily do a takeout though I have seen it specifically in Chicago um any examples on things that bars and your communities are doing right now to sustain them um we do have a few of our bars doing package liquor sales currently I think some of the restrictions have been kind of lifted some of it may be kind of a blind eye but there are some of our bars doing doing that type of service right now an offering package pick up and chose especially with the ones that have some remaining inventory and everything with expiration dates they've been trying to do some of that opportunities and we have some retail businesses that do offer liquor and they've been doing some drop-off services delivery services curbside pickup and stuff so we've seen some people get pretty creative but it's gonna probably depend on your municipality on what what exactly they allow be done if I can jump in we got news that ABC has a kind of like a buyback program so that's something that we shared with our restaurants we don't have straight up cars and bridge any of those aren't allowed but for restaurants that have a lot of liquor inventory they're able to sell it back without a penalty now and and here in DC the the rules have shifted so that restaurants that serve alcoholic beverages can sell bottles sealed containers as long as it's with food as far as bars go you know most of the most of the places here have some sort of food just because a that that licenses is less expensive than a regular bar license but one thing that that we're really encouraging businesses that are having to close down completely to do is take advantage of the fact that you know there's a whole bunch of people sitting at home and poking through social media and trying to figure out how to try to spend their time and entertain themselves and so you know we're encouraging all those businesses and bars could be one of them to to create content to to further their own brand you know whether it's a bar talking about the history of you know a certain cocktail and how to make it or something like a dentist we've got a dentists in our area that specializes in children's dentistry and you know parents are you know climbing up the walls with things to share with their kids that are educational since they can't go to school so you know we're encouraging businesses like dentists just to take that opportunity to create very simple videos about what is a cavity and how to correctly floss your teeth and things like that that can be used as not only educational for kids but as a brand expansion and marketing for the business for when they're ready to reopen thanks so much so we have time just for some final comments here and I just want to know that we have some excellent comments coming in from the audience as well thanking all the presenters for their time today so I my thinks is being amplified by everyone out there watching this program I want to remind everybody that we will provide a recording and slides of what we've seen here and that we will do our best to facilitate there's lots of questions in the question pane that are not fully answered at this point so we will revisit those to try to pull together some extra tips from our presenters so hang tight if you have something that you wanted to see addressed here and any any of our presenters want to add some final thoughts or suggestions a little to the main Streeters first okay I'll pick Andrea say that it might be good if you're ahead of this to help some of your businesses learn how to sell gift cards online and how to move to e-commerce even if it's a quick and dirty solution they're gonna need it to keep their cash flow going thank you I got a I got a completely second that you know we've had some businesses that were a little slow to to jump on the social media bandwagon or the the e-commerce bandwagon and resistance to it resistant to it and if there is any silver lining to this horrible situation it's that I think by the end of it all of our businesses will be embracing the idea of e-commerce and using social media as a marketing tool yeah I want to share something we saw creative out of all of our retailers yesterday and they don't have an online they have got finally got a online website here recently but the opportunity to just sell merchandise online yet they're more of a furniture store but they did a really neat thing yesterday on their social media let's say hey we're putting these together these grab bags $75 worth of merchandise in the grab bag you get one for $50 you can buy the bag we'll deliver it to your doorstep no contact no anything and so they had 30 bags they put together they sold out in the first like hour and this was all just through social media they got local media coverage for it and everything and so it was just a great opportunity and it proved that the community really wants to help out and do something to support these small businesses and so even if you don't have an e-commerce site out there right now they're still creative ways through social media to encourage people to interact with your business they were taking those orders over the phone or through email and I mean that was huge I mean that was one of those things that it helps keep the lights on for a few more days and so I definitely think getting creative and seeing what others are doing is kind of the best thing you can do right now honey what's the name of that business Cameron's Home Furnishings excellent so people want look at that as an example okay thank you again to all of our presenters and then I want to turn finally to Holli again I'm just wondering what you see from the inside position as the next steps here are there looking two more packages of support in the future do we think that there's time to settle into what's been established as of now and what are kind of next steps that communities could take to keep advocating for support sure thank you NFIB is continuing to work with lawmakers there will likely be a technical correction package after this as certainly there will be glitches in this massive two trillion dollar bill that's moving through quickly so looking through to see where we can increase support for small businesses and but right now our efforts will be totally around disseminating information to small business owners of available resources that will hopefully soon be available to them financial resources available to them through the through the paychecks protections program and also to make sure that they're in compliance with the mandates the to leave mandates of the emergency sick leave and they expanded FMLA leave that they're compliant in what's required with them as far as offering leave giving leave and the the poster requirements so it'll be a you know full-court press effort to disseminate information it's all hands on deck at this point and it's great that there's such a huge community out there supporting small businesses excellent well once again I want to thank everyone who's participated with us today through your questions your comments and to our panelists Andrea Donny Kyle Holly it's been a pleasure and I hope that you continue to have success in these efforts and thank you everyone for tuning in again there will be a recording look to the Main Street org Koba 19 resource page for more information have a great day everybody you
