Sign New Hampshire Banking Agreement Simple

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the following is a special presentation of Maine Public Broadcasting Network New Hampshire Public Television and Vermont Public Television throughout northern New England communities are trying to cope with an ailing economy unemployment is rising and people are losing their homes but despite these tremendous challenges there is hope and cities and towns across the regions people are mobilizing in creative ways to help one another coming up on making sense we'll show you some of the things they're doing hello I'm Jennifer rooks on behalf of New Hampshire Maine and Vermont public broadcasters welcome to making sense stories of economic survival in northern New England for the first time ever we are pooling our resources to help you connect with grassroots solutions to the economic crisis we begin in Vermont with the concept of time Banks Kristen Carlson has the story are you comfortable Marge yeah thank you that great Marjorie power is about to get the first facial of her life I would never in my imagination have ever thought of getting a facial so it's sort of exciting it's an unlikely luxury in a tough economy but this pampering is not costing a 67 year old assent instead she's earned this through an exchange system called a time bank the more I've done with it the better I like it a time bank is a way to give and get services without cash Monica Kimball is the head of the onion River exchange in Central Vermont it's a great way to kind of preserve and to raise your status quo without having to pay for it it's not a barter system where one person directly trades with another instead people sign up through a website and list services they can provide and ones they want to get for every hour you spend doing something for someone in your community you are in one hour of credit at the onion River exchange there are 365 services being offered for example one woman earned credits cooking or something and she got piano lessons for her granddaughter new members have trouble for instance going into deficit before they've earned anything I can't spend I don't have any money but of course it isn't money and you can go into deficit and so it's you have to get yourself in a whole different noncommercial mindset non money mindset The Onion River exchange started a year ago with 70 people now there are over two hundred and forty members the hours of services this month already are almost doubled that of last month it's kind of great because well the economy is going so downhill it's really an ideal time to be running a time bank you know because people need those other ways to get things done Marjorie power earned her credit that she redeemed at the spa by making dinner for Colin gone hey Colin haymer soups up 24 year old gun was one of the founding members of The Onion River exchange what do we got it's zucchini bisque it's a vegetarian not vegan and not for people with coronary problems in addition to meals gun also uses the time bank to get help around the house with repairs I've put up requests for things that I find myself really needing but don't necessarily have the money to hire people to help me with it certainly helps and that I don't need money in order to make a request it's for the inner of exchange all I knew is the ability to have something else to offer which everybody does he's handy so to earn his dinner he responded to a request by Monica Kimball to fix an old record player she got free and do you think you can fix it yeah hmm people who participate in time bank say it also helps remind people who are cash-strapped or unemployed that they have worth being able to give those things to see that you are really important that your vital to your community is really empowering for people there are three other time bangs in Vermont in Burlington Middlebury and VAR nerd to sign up for the onion River exchange it costs twenty-five dollars a year and you don't need a computer you can check out services in the office at City Hall and there are also people who offer their computers for use it provides the community away each you connect people who would never otherwise meet good how are you Monica Kimball earned her record player repair by volunteering at the restore in Barre Vermont the nonprofit collects used items and business surplus and sells them cheap what did you first think when you heard of this idea of time banking well I didn't really know what it meant but then I was able to talk with a coordinator and she was able to explain that it's not a direct you know exchange it's sort of like a barter network with grant programs being cut the restore relies on time bank volunteers in this you know economic climate this kind of creative response to people meeting services is going to be the way the future back at the spa Marjorie powers enjoying her facial earned through the time bank at first when you go in you kind of treat your credits like money so you tend to save them because we're all supposed to be saving and but that's not how it works you have to treat them as if I hoard these I'm breaking the system down so it's one of the few occasions where you can really spend spend spend at without feeling guilty the holistic of spas less than a year old and signed up for the time bank to bring in new customers some people might think it's counterintuitive for business to be giving away a service so how does this help the business um actually I found that a lot of the clients that I have through or talk about it with their friends and word of mouth in such a small community is very valuable for us this is a tough time for us and we really feel like the community has supported us and we're supporting the community a time bank chain running through New England as people and businesses find ways to get through the recession without using cash for Vermont Public Television I'm Kristin Carlson in Montpelier Vermont to connect with a time banks program in your area go to the making sense website at making sense any wordpress com the next story highlights one idea to help save homes from foreclosure and bank customers deal with the recession I travelled to Gorham Maine to learn about one community banks groundbreaking program Donna and Gerard LeBlanc are like many retired couples they like to spend time with their grandkids and each other they built their house in Westbrook Maine 32 years ago and the mortgage is almost paid off so last fall when they got a letter from their bank offering an opportunity to skip a mortgage payment they didn't think much of it at the time I didn't think it was anything I was interested in but I held on to it and then we happen to go on a winter vacation this year and we come back and I got looking at things and just decided that gee maybe I'll look into this and find out a little bit more about it because my savings wasn't exactly where I wanted to be the LeBlanc's took advantage of the offer it's a nice feeling because when you figure that things aren't as good as they are but then you get an opportunity like that it's great thing the LeBlanc's mortgages with Gorham savings bank based in Gorham Maine senior vice president Greg Palmer says the bank came up with the skip a mortgage idea last summer as a way to help its customers deal with fuel prices which at the time were more than four dollars a gallon Palmer had no idea how many people would take advantage of the program so far more than 125 have applied for all kinds of reasons I recall one customer who had had lost their job but had obtained a new job but they would start just starting it was going to be a couple of weeks before they got that first paycheck the bank created two simple forms customers could just fill out and mail in they were able to offer the program to about 2800 customers who had their first or second mortgage with the bank these had to be our own mortgages those mortgages that are made by gorham savings bank and still are in our our assets if you will a loan that was sold on the secondary market we couldn't do it this program gave the LeBlanc's one more tool in their financial toolkit it gave us a little bit of a just a little bit of leeway and that was all we needed but you know a lot of people might it might be the necessity of buying their groceries as are paying them their mortgage the president of gorham savings bank estimates that the mortgage deferment program put 140 thousand dollars back into his community this winter many other northern New England banks are developing similar programs to learn more about them again go to our website making sense any dot wordpress.com it is said that small businesses are the engine of northern New England's economy many however are slowing due to the recession there is an organization of volunteers providing tools to help small businesses succeed Phil Vaughn reports from Manchester New Hampshire in this economic climate what's it like owning a business a lot of nervous hours just trying to make sure that you're doing everything everything you need to do David d'amour knows the auto body repair business for 20 years he worked for the owner of this shop in Manchester New Hampshire he sanded painted and pieced cars back together two years ago David and his wife Susan bought the business as owners they learned quickly it sink or swim it was a lot to learn you need to be thinking all the time you need to be you know have a special relationship with each of your employees and you have a different relationship with each one of them because everybody's different and you want to bring out the best in them and in the best for your company and the company the d'amours bought came with a lot of challenges the fact that we bought the company it was a preexisting company and the previous owner had let things go with the company in this business you have to put out a lot of money buying parts you know and then fix the car and then you get paid for it so there you have to have a lot of working capital and there's a lot of juggling involved so rather than trying to work through all the problems on their own the demores look for help they found it at score we're here to mentor existing businesses like this one that we're in today Randy rudy is one of 65 counselors at Manchester score chapter all our volunteers most are retired business owners they take on small business clients like the demores and help them with nearly everything from marketing to creating business plans what they don't provide is money we obviously have people who come to us in trouble we can't solve all problems but we help them diagnose the problem figure out what the worst part of it is see if we can come up with recommendations that will help them build cash flow build sales whatever it may be when I first came to them david was under tremendous pressure Shep Bartlett is a score counselor how many years of business experience do you have how many is 150 and he shares that knowledge with his clients Bartlett helped the demores secure loans set up the books and work on finances all of this before they officially took over the business he had you know a lot of a lot of general knowledge he had a lot of good connections with with banks and you know even other counselors with score he brought in you know that had different expertise so what would you sit with him and go over problems and you give them advice yeah I don't never tell anybody what to do my and my philosophy is is to see to add my clients I have all the information that they need to run a successful business they were able to help us with the business plan they brought us to you know introduced us to a bank and you know and started having us down the right the right path no they put us in connection with the right people to help us do what we wanted to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish the model is that we don't do the work we give the advice we help the fact is that within the group you have different levels of participation you know I'll start somebody's business plan but I won't write at all it if I write it it's not going to be their business plan but I'll help them set it up I'll get them a template I'll do what I need to do but in the end the owner has to do the work and we stay with them as long as they want us to guide them give him somebody to talk to score is a creation of the federal government Small Business Administration it began 40 years ago and now operates in 370 communities throughout the country they worked with a Vermont Teddy Bear company Jelly Belly candies and recently Rudy took on a professional clown about fifty percent of our clients are in business the other fifty percent are trying to start a business score services are free and Rudy says that in Manchester volunteers are busy the recession is part of the reason so 15 to 20 cases I guess you could say we run in that range every week we're seeing more of those now I still have a lot of people want to start a business which you know I give them credit for having enough what's but I want to do that in this climate and some of them have good ideas Randy and Shep have some simple advice for all small business owners talk with each other how important is that networking you know business owners talking with business owners helping each other I think I always urge my people to get with other people and network I think it's very important and I won't say that David does that yet but he's going mid-city body and frame is doing okay these days the demores employed 12 people and have three tow trucks hauling in new work a lot of the credit they say goes to Shep and his willingness to share 50 years of business wisdom he just was just always there for us and supporting us and with the bank everywhere we went he was there representing us and backing us and he believed in us and and there's nothing better than you believe in yourself and someone that believes in you in Manchester New Hampshire I'm Phil Vaughn to contact a local score office go to the making sense website at making sense and e dot wordpress com some people say we all play a role in keeping the local economy strong 10% shift is a New England organization aimed at promoting the idea that the more you spend at local businesses the healthier your local economy will be Phil Vaughn has more on the story from Dover New Hampshire when Andrew Keller opened this business in downtown dover new hampshire he had more in mind than simply selling gas we decided to put out our kind of challenge to our business with buying 75% of our products within a 100-mile radius Keller's business is meeting that challenge the fuel comes from a local distributor most of the goods sold inside the store are made or sold on consignment by local vendors to us it was really really important to bring all of our products in from as many close sources as possible Keller's decision to buy local came after considering what he believes are the long-term benefits to both his community and business logistically you might just be more expensive but I think if there's enough awareness of what the benefits are the true benefits of shopping local are then consumers will probably choose to understand that they're supporting their neighbor and Keller's not alone in his approach we are excited to announce the ten percent shift campaign this is the new hampshire launch of ten percent shift it's a new england wide campaign encouraging shoppers and businesses to make ten percent of their expenditures local the reason why we picked the ten percent number it was we figured that was achievable for anybody it didn't one great thing about the ten percent shift it doesn't ask you to spend more money and estrogens redirect we spend a portion of your money Karen Mars los de Rex the program in New Hampshire seacoast area buying from locally owned independent businesses she says creates jobs and economic activities study conducted by civic economics in Michigan seems to agree that showed if people shifted ten percent of their spending in the Grand Rapids metro area if those people shifted ten percent of their spending it would create um sixteen hundred new jobs and almost 140 million dollars in additional economic economic activity in their area more money Marge law says stays within a community when sales are made at local busin sses Jonathan on his way to work stopped at Andrews simply free gas station in Dover almost seventy percent of your money stays here if you spend at a locally owned independent business if it you spend it at a non-local you independent business only about forty percent of your money stays in the community Marsh law says one way to make that happen is to shift your mortgage to a locally owned bank another really easy way and this might appeal to a lot of people that are trying to watch their expenses anyway is to stop using credit cards because the stores have to pay fees to the credit card and debit card company that goes out of our community so if you just pay cash then that's keeping more of your money in the community but the simplest most easy way with that really clearly won't cost you a dime is to just switch your but where you buy your gas to a locally owned independent gas station which takes us back to Dover it's challenged to fight you know or work against some of the larger you know corporate he's out there meaning there's often a price advantage for big box stores that order in large volume that's the reality however Keller says if ten percent of expenditures go to local businesses that money circulates through the local economy every resource that I can have locally I'm going to do it the local printing folks we might work for for printing you know our food for fuel concept or the local bakery all those things that we can we need anyways in our business I would rather buy local because then in turn they're probably going to come back around and buy from me or buy from somebody else down the line as far as the other vendors that are all kind of have the same mentality of supporting each other Andrews family is in town this weekend so he's taken his dollar to Strawberry Bank museum the organizers of ten percent chefs say of course there is a role for change doors and local economies with the recession and rising unemployment however they also believe that a shift to local is becoming an attractive alternative jobs is the biggest thing if we want to have not only jobs for today but build a community that has a vibrant local economy there's a lot of economic activity which attracts more companies to open that businesses here and open up their doors here then this is the way to secure that Dover New Hampshire I'm Phil Vaughn there's a list of by local programs including ten percent shift on our website making sense any wordpress com food costs take a big bite out of most household budgets that may be why there is a big surge in popularity in food co-ops and food buying clubs I visited a relatively new food buying club in Portland Maine to learn what it's all about once a month just before dawn a truck from united natural food stops at the meg Perry Center on Portland's Congress Street and unloads inside volunteers sort the groceries into individual orders and even divide dry goods into bags that's going to be a box of balls everyone here is a member of the Portland food buying club which is part of the Portland food co-op and formed just a year and a half ago we have around 80 members about half of that probably around 40 40 50 members are actively buying on a regular basis we have about a hundred and fifty to two hundred people who are waiting to become members this delivery is one of two wholesale deliveries that arrive each month the other comes from the crown of Maine which supplies the group with Maine grown produce in other products the group's first order was for six hundred dollars now its sales are ten thousand dollars a month the food buying club focuses on buying local and natural foods and offers a better deal on many products than the big natural foods stores on the local products we do a ten percent markup that's it and that's kind of unusual you know we don't have a lot of overhead so we don't have to worry about how we're going to pay for our stock and so forth so we have no stock so it allows us the luxury of only doing a minimal markup which enables the producers the local producers to make their food more affordable see I'm in her territory right now and I have seconds to get out that's right Robin Sanford joined the buying club a few months ago she and her husband Rob both love to cook they are also shrewd consumers they stock up on staples this is a 50-pound bag of oats that we dip into and just refill our container as we go and buy food items when they go on sale I know that if I get this from the buying club if it's on sale it will you know I might take a couple of dollars on it or the tofu toefl right now is pretty expensive it's very popular this was an excellent price i think it was less than two dollars and in the store might be 229 to 69 I think Robins days probably eight hundred dollars a year by by using good strategery Robin says money is not the only reason she joined the buying club but it is a big one my mother was a single parent I had four brothers and actually I would go shopping with her we always paid very close attention to what things cost university of maine business professor james makonnen studies consumer trends including food trends the interest and the growth in food buying clubs across the country is growing it's one of the fastest growing segments of kind of the co-operative buying model he says on average an American family spends 12 percent of its budget on food and costs are rising last year food prices rose about five percent this year they're expected to rise three or four percent what that does is it really puts the squeeze on on consumers particularly those that have been affected by the recession visa being a lower income or you know lost wages there you've got lower amount of disposable income to spend on the one hand and on the other hand higher costs for food and as a result of that squeeze people really have had to focus on their food budget but can haunt of the Portland food co-op believes for many of the members it is about much more than budget people want I think alternatives to the sort of large-scale agricultural business that has sort of taken over our food system if the cookies not good before you cook it why would it be good after Robin and Rob Sanford appreciate local farmers good food and saving money for them the food buying club offers the whole package there's a lot of talk about sustainable living and trying to buy locally and this buying group you know with the crown of Maine produce and other main made products is a way for people to really think about that and how to integrate it into their lifestyles buying cooperatives aren't just for food some towns and even neighborhoods in northern New England have organized to buy home heating oil if you'd like more information on what people are doing to survive the recession you can go to our website making sense and e dot wordpress.com working together Maine New Hampshire and Vermont public broadcasting stations have pulled together resources links and streaming video in one place once online tell us what you're doing to weather the economic storm and what you'd like to see us tackle next I'm Jennifer rooks thank you for watching making sense production to making sense northern New England and the economy has been made possible by goodwill industries of northern New England working to responsibly recycle old computers through the reconnect program in Maine New Hampshire and Vermont information online at goodwill and n e dot org you