The Office of Advocacy has undertaken many projects that have had a positive impact on rural small businesses. Because of Advocacy's past leadership, it is possible for the office to continue to play a strong role in advocating for both rural and urban small businesses. Toward this end, the following are suggestions for future work that the Office of Advocacy could undertake.
White House Conference on Small Business
In 1995, the White House Conference on Small Business took place. No recommendations or actions that specifically addressed unique rural small business needs came out of this conference, however. Future discussion is necessary to ensure that these unique needs are not overlooked. Ideally, a similar conference would be convened and would include representatives from both rural and urban areas, recognizing that business needs differ based on geographic location and infrastructure availability.
Differentiate Research into Rural and Urban Regions
Whenever possible, the Office of Economic Research should give breakdowns of urban and rural data in its reports. For example, in banking studies, locations should be used to divide the data into urban and rural areas (or some other more appropriate geographical distinction: urban, rural-near-urban, and rural). This new interpretation of the data will be extremely useful to rural development professionals. To facilitate this process, the Office of Advocacy has recently obtained USDA data that identifies metro, near metro, and truly rural counties. Now researchers must determine how to incorporate this breakdown into research to make the results useful to both urban and rural practitioners.
Create and Disseminate Request-for-Proposal (RFP) Topics that Address Rural Research Needs
The Office of Advocacy routinely requests proposals for outside research from qualified researchers. Advocacy encourages outside researchers to study topics of importance to those interested in small businesses. Although Advocacy requested rural proposals, none of those submitted were technically acceptable. This may be due to the fact that there was a short time period in which proposals could be submitted, or because the RFPs were not sent to appropriate researchers.
Once a rural research topic has been proposed, a reliable method needs to be used to disseminate the proposal topics to researchers qualified to study rural needs. The NRDP Listserv provides access to hundreds of rural professionals and agency representatives who could aid in disseminating research proposal topics. The NRDP Truman Fellow at SBA has access to this listserv.
Create and Disseminate Economic Research that Addresses Rural Needs
State Rural Development Councils of the NRDP have identified several areas in which rural research could be conducted. Those research needs are included with this document. As these rural data needs are met through economic research, the Office of Advocacy must actively distribute the information to rural practitioners. Once again, the NRDP Listserv provides an easy, existing method to contact rural professionals throughout the country.
Explore Further Collaboration with the NRDP
NRDP and the Office of Advocacy have much to offer one another. The Office of Advocacy should continue to explore possible collaboration with NRDP in as many ways as possible. This could include, but is not limited to: attendance at national conferences, use of NRDP dissemination channels to share information with rural areas, participation in the National Rural Development Council (a network of government agency and organizational representatives), continued support of an NRDP Truman Fellow, presentations at NRDP events, and /or financial support of the partnership.
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Advancing Rural America: Overview Office of Economic Research: Publications Office of Interagency Affairs: Regulatory Activity Activities of Advocacy's Regional Advocates Other Advocacy Initiatives that Impact Affecting Rural Areas Future Efforts to Work that Could Impact Improve Small Businesses in Rural Areas Additional Areas of Research |
Information courtesy of the Small Business Administration.
