2007

TO: Businesses trying to reach small business leaders, owners, and employees
FM: SmallBusinessSchool

RE: Sponsoring the show on your local PBS-member station

Hi -

We all thank you for your interest; you have found your way to this page of our web site! We are Small Business School, your local station, and our viewers in your markets. An opening and closing credit with this show is a sponsorship credit that helps your local station meet its operational costs. That sponsorship positions your business at a very high level. It is a community gift. However, we attempt to deliver more to all our local sponsors. We attempt to create as much additional value for the dollars you spend with your station so we can all say, "We over-delivered." This letter is an open invitation to leverage the assets of this show within your markets as your show. When you sponsor the show in your market, you own the show for your market. Of course, you share that ownership with the national sponsors, but it becomes your show.

You are the first and last impressions associated with the character, integrity, diversity and expertise of each of the small business owners on SmallBusinessSchool.

In these transformational times, the vital role of small business has been more fully recognized; people are increasingly aware of the aggregate effect of millions of people creating something of value every day. Small business is a great source for the growth and vibrancy within our economy. In that light, our episode, the Soul of the American Economy, this year with Michael Novak broke new grounds. Our episode, People Power, is the beginning of a national initiative to focus on the 17 million sole proprietors to create a job, "Just One Job" which has become the name of our campaign rolling out with Chambers of Commerce, Workforce Initiatives and Economic Development Commissions around the country.

Our episode about cyber security also broke new grounds. That episode has had wide distribution and frequent re-airings in many markets because programming directors and station managers realized that information was vital to all businesses and all viewers in our ever-increasingly interconnected world.

We are hopeful that you might be able to build on any pre-existing partnerships that exist between you and our national sponsors.

Though we all know ways that business is being redefined by new technologies, the depth and breadth of change is still being discovered and understood. Our episode entitled, The Power of One, picks up on earlier episodes about WiFi, mobile, knowledge management, and server-based businesses. We are at the front edge of interpreting the knowledge revolution and encouraging small businesses to be global.

Demanding and exciting times... it is great to be alive and to be right in the middle of it all. And, we are privileged to have you consider sponsoring the show on your local station.

This document, a working document, discusses it all. We hope this is effective, but we know there will be questions which we are glad to try to answer as these arise. Thank you.

With every good wish for your continued successes,