I. Small Business Producers' Club. In most public television stations, there is a Producers' Club for those people who contribute $1000 or more during the year. One of our primary goals is to increase the number of small business owners within that club. It will serve the small businesses and empower the local stations. Our very ambitious goal for 2007 - 2008 is to encourage 400,000 small business owners to join their station's Producers' Club. Every business that does will receive up to $1000 worth of courses within our LearnOnline. Everybody in that business can register and have complete access to the courses for free. Plus, we will work with each station so new Producer Club members get an occasional credit, both run of schedule and sometimes as the opener to the airing of SmallBusinessSchool. That model has worked in Phoenix and San Diego. More...

The Producers' Club Challenge. To make this offer even richer for the small business owner, SmallBusinessSchool, upon request, will also provide free access to the CPE courses for their CPA. That's another $100 in free CPE classes (ten hours) whereby the small business owner can now collaborate with their CPA -- online, realtime -- within each class, and determine if they can take that concept and make it work within their business.

One of the goals of SmallBusinessSchool has been to get every small business owner working on a succession plan and liquidity model the (See Third Statistic).

Examples of that credit are posted here: http://SmallBusinessSchool.org/AZ   If go to this page, click on Robert F. Hockensmith, PC, to watch a 15 second spot.

In San Diego, this effort will include 100 small businesses at $1K per business. Once it gets going, we believe every market has at least 100 and as many as 1000 such owners. There is a small business for every 12 people within any given population in the USA. Why not have this group be responsible for eliminating one of the local station's fund-raisers altogether?

II. Getting local business groups as sponsors. In New Mexico there are two local Chambers of Commerce that sponsor Small Business School. But that could easily include the local DECD offices, Tourism-Conventions, SBA offices, Small Business Development Centers, Workforce Development, Better Business Bureaus, SBA-preferred lenders, local NFIB groups, small business associations, business press, and even the Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions clubs. In most states (or a local station's Designated Market Area - DMA), there are at least ten organizations and each of them could easily afford $300 (in the smallest markets) to $3000 a year as a gift to their local PBS station.

Banks, large CPAs, large law firms, and large real estate developers will all want to participate. To not be involved would look very tight. All of these dollars stay local, drive viewership, encourage entrepreneurship, lifts up great role models, and the list of positive impacts could go on and on.

We attempt to support these local initiatives as much as possible:
In San Diego, check: /webapp/sbs/States/CA/SanDiego/resources.jsp
In Maine, check: http://SmallBusinessSchool.org/ME
For New Mexico, check: http://SmallBusinessSchool.org/NM

III. Membership Incentives. We want small business owners, the viewers of our show, to join their local station but not at $35 or $45 a year. We want to start them at $100.

To help get them to do it, we are offering to each of our stations full scholarships per year to Small Business School Learn Online for every viewer of the show who renews their membership at the station for $100.

A course of ten classes usually costs $99. Our cost is bandwidth and infreastructure and our sponsors are happy to support that.

Then the next step for these members of the station will be join the local Producers' Club. To help get a group moving in that direction, again we will donate access to all the courses on the Small Business School web site and for an unlimited number of users within that small business.

The value of this scholarship is $1000 but "free" if the viewer joins the station at $1000. Each station may also consider providing these $1K donors with some kind of sponsorship credit like that in #2.