If you’ve yet to invest in DEI work for you and your team, now is the time. 

Bricks Need Mortar has been working with Woonwinkel owner, Kristin Van Buskirk, to deliver a DEI program tailored to small businesses, particularly retail, restaurant, and personal service sectors.

DEI training is often created for corporate environments with HR departments and significant infrastructure to manage and maintain DEI investments.

Small businesses need DEI training that is customized for the intimate environments where employees and owners engage closely with one another and with customers.

Court Morse of Action Path is working with Bricks Need Mortar to deliver a 2 session DEI program for small business owners, management, leadership and full staff to come away with transparent recommendations to focus on both, internal and external impact. Learn more about Action Path here. 

DEI Consulting can be cost prohibitive for small businesses. This virtual and live, 2 session shared training makes it accessible and affordable.

Program Details:

This is a live, virtual program. Due to the personal nature of content, this WILL NOT be recorded.

Focus & Intended Training Outcomes:

Transparent Recommendations that will be effective for multiple roles and positions across management and staff teams.

A focus on both internal and external impact for diversity, inclusion and equity.

Specific strategy for small businesses and staff teams.

Scope of Training:

All Training will be tailored to small, brick and mortar businesses including, but not limited to retail, restaurant and personal service providers.

Session One: What is DEI Anyway? (2 hours)	Session Two: Getting Granular (2 hours)
– Understanding the components of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for small business – Looking at the full landscape of impact opportunity for racial justice – Understanding the Individual, Cultural and Procedural approaches to the work	How each role can show up to the work How to create an inclusive internal environment that also impacts customers and clients How to find resources and bring future employees in the work

In addition to the two sessions Action Path will provide a highlight of toolkit resources to guide businesses for follow up opportunities.

This program is designed to serve all employees including ownership, management, leadership and entry level.

Due to significant interest we are able to offer two training sessions. 

Tuesday, September 13th and Wednesday, September 14th 9am-11am both days

Or

Tuesday September 27th and Thursday, September 29th, 8:30-10:30am both days

To register, please choose payment link for the number of employees attending from your business and fill out form with names and emails of attendees. Emails will only be used to share link for the DEI session.

Please register by September 7th.

1-2 employees — $120 per person    1 person     2 people

3-5 employees — $360

6-10 employees — $720

11 or more —$1200 

*BNM members receive 25% off above mentioned pricing.

Contact BNM for member payment options.

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“Changing your workplace culture to be inclusive and equitable benefits everybody. But it also ensures you’re ready for the diversifying of our workforce. 47% of Portlanders between the ages of 15 and 19 are people of color.  DEI training is necessary for our business, our staff, and our customers.” 
-Kristin Van Buskirk owner Woonwinkel and BNM member

We look forward to having your business participate in this very important and essential training.

Please reach out with any thoughts or questions!

Be well and be together!
Sarah

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Bricks Need Mortar hosted a Candidate Forum on Monday, March 28th inviting candidates running for Portland City Council Seats 2 and 3 and Multnomah County Chair to participate in a live, virtual Q&A. 

The focus of this forum was to learn more about the candidates’ views, ideas and commitments to support small businesses and the greater community.

Questions were provided by attendees in advance and covered Crime, Budget Priorities, Houselessness, Permitting/Taxes and their Visions and Ideas for the future of Portland.

Our Participants:

City Commissioner Position 2:
– City Commissioner Dan Ryan
– AJ McCreary

City Commissioner Position 3:
– City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty
– Rene Gonzalez
– Vadim Mozyrsky

Multnomah County Chair:
– Commissioner Sharon Meieron
– Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson
– Commissioner Lori Stegmann

Candidates have been invited to provide written responses to questions. Those will be provided as they are submitted.

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As we come out of an uncertain year the one certainty is that the path to fully reopening The We Are Here January 2022 survey explores employment, crime, revenue, solutions and needs for 113 reporting Portland brick and mortar small businesses. Businesses include restaurant, retail and service sectors.

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Key Takeaways:

We need to deploy new and immediate crime mitigation efforts. We’re proposing:Redirect resources like PBOT to help police with crime investigationsInvest in nightly patrols to shine lights on main street businessesWhile 2020 saw a significant shift from in store on to online shopping, 2021 saw a big return to in store commerce. 80% of small businesses conducted 70%+ of business in store. 47% of small businesses saw an increase in 2021 Black Friday weekend sales over 2020. It’s worth noting that 56% of Small Shops Big Hearts Shop Small Win Big Holiday Event participants saw an increase for that same weekend. This tells us that in store shopping continues to be small business secret sauce. This is an important factor when considering your marketing and operations investments.

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Regarding ARPA funding, overwhelmingly your top priorities are:|

– Addressing Houselessness
– Grants for Commercial Rent Relief
– Support of Employee Benefit Programs
– Reimbursement for Operations Investments due to covid
– Giving Stimulus Dollars to Community Members that can only be spent at Small Businesses

We are sharing this data with you so you can see where you stand with your peers. More extensive survey data is available in the Bricks Need Mortar member portal.

We also share this data with policy makers to make the case to further invest in the needs of our small businesses.

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Small Shops Big Hearts Holiday Shopping Event takes place
Friday, November 26th and Saturday, November 27th

We are excited to share this fun event with you!

 Plan to shop with us and other Portland SMALL businesses for chances to win BIG!

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Here’s How it Works:

– Explore The Small Shops Big Hearts Shopping Guide to map out shops to visit. Shopping guides are available online at smallshops-bighearts.com and at participating shops!   – Head to kuto.app/smallshopsbighearts to register and view participating businesses. Kuto is a great and contact free way to pay.   – Mark your calendar and plan to play and shop on Nov 26th and 27th.   – Your first purchase unlocks 10% at every other participating small business.* Each purchase earns 3 raffle entries.   – Purchases made through the Kuto app doubles the number of raffle entries (6/purchase).   – Visit as many participating small businesses as possible. Raffle entries double after 3 purchases, triple after 6, and quadruple after 9.   – Prizes include ipad, hotel stays, concert and performing arts tickets, dining experiences and gifts from Venture Portland, Travel Portland and nearly 100 participating small businesses. Check out all the prizes here. *Note that discounts may not apply for custom, special order and in addition to other offers. Some regulated goods may be prohibited from discounting by state regulations.

Small Shops Big Hearts is built on 4 pillars: 

Join us! Be in Community. Shop Local and with Intention. Be Inspired. Share the love and bring your friends!

It’s been a long couple of years, friends! 
The small business community is grateful to you and wants to let you know that they are doing all they can to provide a safe, healthy and inspiring shopping experience for you!

We thank you in advance for your patience, consideration and ongoing support.
Thank you for wearing a mask. Participating shops will be doing so too!

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PDXSOS began as a distress signal, a call to action to people in Portland to head out and support the small businesses that they love so they can still be around to enjoy when the pandemic is over.

Little Boxes has been a Portland Thanksgiving weekend holiday tradition, bringing together small businesses to amplify the message to shop small and local and making it FUN with raffle prizes and incentives.

Coming together as a community amplifies the message to shop small this holiday season.

We look forward to having you be part of this event!  Learn More here!

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More than ever small businesses find they’re spending a significant amount of time and budget creating, scheduling and posting content for social media.

Are  your small business social media efforts focused where they’ll produce the best results?

Join Bricks Need Mortar for a learning session and Q +A  with Locl* on how to optimize and use your google listing to drive customers into your business. 
In this session:

1. Learn how to drive more visibility to your business
2. Convert searches into sales
3. Better understand customer behavior

*Locl is a software solution designed by sales and marketing experts that allows brick-and-mortar businesses of all types, globally, to utilize top acquisition channels, like Google My Business, like a pro in less time. By using Locl, businesses can drive more visibility, turn searches into sales, and better understand customer behavior.

Travel Portland currently provides small businesses with free premium access to Locl services. This learning session is sponsored by Travel Portland.
 

This is free to attend.
Register and post questions today!

Bricks Need Mortar began with PDXSOS, a distress signal and a call to action for people to support our small businesses during the pandemic. 

PDXSOS joined forces with Little Boxes, the event that makes shopping small and local a fun and rewarding experience.

As we look forward to the holiday season, we’re taking the best of both to build something new, more impactful and year round!

We’re proud to announce that PDXSOS + Little Boxes are now:

We have a lot of exciting things in the works with Small Shops Big Hearts that will make this directory of over 700 small businesses a dynamic and engaging place for people to discover new places to shop, dine and explore all the amazing local small businesses Portland has to offer.

We’re happy to share that the directory will continue to be a free resource for small businesses and users.

As we move forward to complete this change please review and confirm your listing, share updates and add more information that will help us to better direct people to your small business.

Please take a a few minutes to fill out this form to ensure that your small business is best represented.

We look forward to presenting the new Small Shops Big Hearts site to you very soon!

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The Associated press reports that mask sales rose 24% and google searches for masks have doubled in the last week with the news of the Delta variant’s explosive spread and breakthrough infections amongst fully vaccinated individuals.

Small businesses are reporting infections amongst vaccinated staff and the need to close for testing and cleaning. Bricks Need Mortar recommends fully masking for staff and requesting that customers continue to wear masks.

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Using Our Voices to
Encourage Vaccinations

Click on each image for more community
stories about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Making a difference. The number one thing that we can do is encourage people to get vaccinated!

The vaccine hesitant population needs the reassurance that vaccines are safe and effective. Research shows that it’s especially powerful to hear from someone you know.  OHA (Oregon Health Authority) has a program where individual Oregonians post their vaccine story to their own social media using primarily Instagram and Tik Tok. These social media interactions are so important that the project pays a small stipend for each participant. As a small business owner with loyal followers, we’re asking you to participate and help get more people vaccinated so we can all get back to business safely! Covid is disproportionately impacting BIPOC and rural communities. We highly recommend that our BIPOC small business owners and those with a large customer base in BIPOC and rural communities participate in this program. Pop over to this website and a community organizer will reach out to you with more details. Examples of other posts can be found at www.myvaccinereason.org. If you have an idea and would like to participate in helping to increase vaccinations, particularly among communities who are most impacted we’d love to hear from you directly!

Let’s help get more people vaccinated and let’s get back to the work we love!

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Bricks Need Mortar Community Update

As we come out of an uncertain year the one certainty is that the path to fully reopening may have a path of its own. Bricks Need Mortar members came together a few days ago to share how things are going in their businesses and revealed the following:

– A wide variety of masking procedures – while some businesses are letting go of all masking requirements, some continue to keep them in place. Members discussed staff vaccinations, how they influence safety protocols and the need for constant messaging. Workers are significantly more likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine when their employers encourage it and provide paid time off for vaccination and recovery. Under the American Rescue Plan, employers are entitled to tax credits for providing paid leave to employees who take time off related to COVID-19 vaccinations.

 – Online sales have slowed – as people return to in person experiences and travel, some businesses are reporting significant declines in ecommerce sales reminding us to focus on improving the in store experience, capturing customer emails and preparing both our stores and our websites for the upcoming holiday season.

–  Hiring continues to be challenging – finding experienced employees is difficult and expensive. We recommend reviewing our July discussion on Hiring in the Reopening Economy.

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Bricks Need Mortar brings our community together to share challenges and solutions, advocates for the needs of our small businesses, and works to develop impactful programs that benefit our community.

Bricks Need Mortar founder, Sarah Shaoul, was recently recognized for this work and used the opportunity to highlight the Bricks Need Mortar x Kuto partnership to create the first of its kind Small Shops Big Hearts PDXSOS gift card that can be used at hundreds of small businesses while saving small businesses from paying high credit card fees.

Watch the 1 minute video here:

Bricks Need Mortar Community Update

Governor Brown has signed into law HB 2966A. This extends the repayment period for deferred commercial rents to September 30, 2021, allowing time for grant funds, including Shuttered Venue, Restaurant Relief, and other grants to arrive at small businesses so businesses can pay deferred rents. 

We want to thank Oregon Representative Rob Nosse for his leadership and sponsorship of this bill. This law was supported through the strong advocacy of Bricks Need Mortar and our partners Business for a Better Portland (BBPDX) through Oregon Small Businesses United (OSBU).

Your membership makes it possible for us to advocate for you. 

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