Ten good reasons to shop at locally owned businesses:

1. More money stays in your community because locally owned businesses purchase from other local businesses, service providers, and farms. Purchasing locally helps grow other businesses as well as your community's tax base.
2. Local businesses provide most new jobs: Small local businesses are the largest employer nationally.
3. One-of-a-kind businesses are an integral part of a community's distinctive character: The unique character of any town or region is what people love about it, and why people want to live there.
   
4. Local business owners become inviolved in community: People who own local businesses live in the community, are less likely to leave, and are more invested in the community's future.
5. Customer service is better. Local owners are your neighbors.  They build relationships with their customers.
   
6. A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader variety of product choices.
7. Locally owned businesses are better for the environment because they can make more local purchases, requiring less transportation, and  contribute less to sprawl, congestion, habitat loss, and pollution.
8. Local businesses in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure investment and make more efficient use of public services as compared to nationally owned stores entering the community.
9. A growing body of economic research shows that in an increasingly homogenized world, entrepreneurs and skilled workers are more likely to invest in communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character.
10. Nonprofit organizations benefit by receiving an average 350 percent greater support from local business owners than they do from non-locally owned businesses.