Our local sponsors are a special group of people:

1. They are helping to keep your local station healthy.
These business are always local and their sponsorship dollars go directly to the station. For that contribution to the local station, SmallBusinessSchool will provide an unlimited number of scholarships for LearnOnline that can be used as a premium. These are the same courses that are made available to small business owners when they renew their membership with their local station.

2. They work closely with the small business advocates in the area.
They are helping to solve real problems that small business owners face each day. We invite these problem-solvers to be part of the weekly collaboration event at the end of each episode. Their expert opinions and counsel are invited. These events are when the viewers get to discuss the key points within that episode (from the case study guide) with local people and local small business advocates. It is a weekly focus group to make each community (and that viewing area) just a little bit better than it was the week before.

3. They tell their own success stories and post them on the site.
Increasingly we will be placing active links throughout the web site to your local sponsors for specific offers based on real local case studies of their customers. You will see how specific problems have been solved by other small business owners using the local sponsor's products and/or services.

4. They'll be nominating their own best customers to be profiled.
Within every Designated Market Area (DMA), there will be hundreds of local productions of local episodes of the show. The selection process is well documented. SmallBusinessSchool takes nominations and begins developing a list of the best, the most generous people in the area -- the quiet heroes and new pioneers. SmallBusinessSchool seeks nominations from the local sponsors and from the Chambers of Commerce Economic Development Commissions within that DMA. We also turn to the local SBA office (include SBDCs and SCORE), the local CPAs, the local business school professors and business press, small business coaches, local trade associations, and the area's political leadership (mayors, town managers, governors, senators, representatives). That list is also posted and prioritized for the next production of an episode within that DMA.

Verizon has several special offers for those small businesses within the local geographies of the former GTE and Bell Atlantic and Nynex, and they are many offers that are available to all business owners in the USA -- unlimited local, regional and national calling. That's freedom.

Our advocacy partner has been the United States Small Business Administration.

Our national media partners have included Bottom Line Business, Broadband House, Business Week, Forbes, and Success.

Again, our local sponsors contribute dollars to support your local public television station for their broadcasts of Small Business School. At times, BellSouth Mobile, Qwest, and Southwestern Bell, utility companies (Detroit Edison, Madison Gas & Electric), newspapers (San Diego Union Tribune and the Baton Rouge Business Journal), and small business agencies like the SBA, SCORE, Small Business Development Centers and the Chambers of Commerce, have also particpated.

If you are a local sponsor of the program and you are not listed, please drop us a note and we will add your name and hyperlinks on this page and the page from the state and station(s) currently supported!