BTW News Briefs

SBA Launches Small Business Week Video Contest

It’s almost time for National Small Business Week 2012 (May 20 -26), and to kick things off the U.S. Small Business Administration has launched a video contest. The contest is an opportunity for small business owners and entrepreneurs to share their success stories with a larger audience and emphasize how important they are to their local economy. 

Videos can be submitted through Challenge.gov from 12:00 p.m. EDT April 16 through 5: 00 p.m. May 11. Contestants should produce a short (1-2 minutes), original video to share their story.  The list of Contest Rules provides additional details on the required video content and format.  Videos will be judged on the inspirational nature of the message for potential small business owners and the creativity or uniqueness of the video concept. 

Three winning videos will be featured during National Small Business Week and shown during a Google+ Hangout hosted by SBA and the White House on May 23.  The winners will be invited to participate in the event. Qualifying videos that don’t win will be showcased on SBA’s YouTube page. 

Pulitzers Announced — No Fiction Winner Named

On Monday, the winners of the 2012 Pulitzer Prizes were announced, but what was most notable was the lack of a winner in the fiction category for the first time in 35 years.

The prizes, celebrating achievement in newspaper and online journalism, literature, nonfiction and musical composition, were announced at Columbia University in New York.

 This year’s winners in the field of Letters and Drama are:

DRAMA: Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes

HISTORY: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable (Viking)

BIOGRAPHY: George F. Kennan: An American Life by John Lewis Gaddis (The Penguin Press)

POETRY: Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press)             

GENERAL NONFICTION: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton)

MUSIC: Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts by Kevin Puts, commissioned and premiered by the Minnesota Opera in Minneapolis on November 2011.

GalleyCat used its Best Indie Bookstores on Twitter list to ask booksellers around the country for their reactions and what their fiction picks would have been. A compilation of other responses to the lack of fiction winner can be found on Google.

Louisville Releases Preliminary Results of Economic Survey

Early results of an economic survey of Louisville, Kentucky, facilitated by a partnership between Civic Economics and the American Booksellers Association, documents the positive economic effects of Louisville’s locally-owned businesses, as opposed to big retail chains.

WFPL News reported that “preliminary results for Louisville show what the alliance has always assumed. Nearly $40 of every $100 spent at local businesses stays in the community. The survey compares the local businesses against three large chain stores, including Home Depot, Target and Barnes & Noble. At these chains the community only keeps $14 of every $100.”

The final report is expected in May.

SBA Expands Intermediary Lending Program

The Small Business Administration’s Intermediary Lending Pilot Program (ILP) has opened a second competitive application period. As a result, small businesses, especially those in underserved markets, will soon have access to twice as many community-based funding sources. The ILP was established by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 to provide direct loans to eligible non-profit intermediaries for the purpose of making small business loans of up to $200,000.

Launched last year, the Intermediary Lending Pilot Program makes loans of up to $1 million to participating lenders that then use the funds to make smaller loans to startup, newly established, and growing small businesses. SBA anticipates that an ILP Intermediary will relend its ILP Loan funds approximately 2.5 times over the 20-year term.

For more information on ILP, small business owners and entrepreneurs can contact their local SBA District Office or send an e-mail to ilpp@sba.gov. Locate your local SBA office here.