Our May Happy Hour at Sullivan's last Thursday was a rousing success. Over seventy-five business men and women attended, talked business and had the opportunity to meet other professionals from the Chicagoland area.

Sullivan's, an SBAC member, was a gracious host.  SBAC membership co-chairs Mike Cavanaugh and Joe DeMarco addressed the group about the multitude of benefits that come with being a member of the SBAC.  They made the point that your SBAC membership will pay for itself many times over.

 

Photos of the event can be viewed here.  A final thank you to Jensen Reporting, Korey Law, LLC, Fact Finders Group, Inc. and DeMarco Sciaccotta, LLP, for sponsoring our Happy Hour.

Details for our June Happy Hour will be forthcoming shortly. We look forward to having yet another successful networking event for all of our members and their guests.

 

The SBAC has scheduled our first annual golf outing at Marriott's Crane's Landing golf course in Lincolnshire on Friday, July 23rd.  The tournament will be a scramble with a shotgun start at 12:30 p.m. Players will receive lunch, two drink tickets and many other amenities.

 

Fields Chrysler Jeep is offering a 2010 Jeep Wrangler, for three years, to the golfer that sinks a hole-in-one on a par three.  The Marriott will also be donating a foursome of golf to benefit the SBAC, which will be awarded for the longest drive.

We have thousands of dollars in gift certificates to award as prizes, and we are just getting started.  Local businesses are providing overwhelming support for our golf outing.

 

Please contact us in the event that your company would like to sponsor a hole. 

 

You can fill out your online application for the golf outing by clicking on the following link: 2010 SBAC Golf Outing Application

The price per player is $125.00 and includes food, drink tickets and many other amenities.  The afternoon will also include a cocktail reception after the golf outing where I will no doubt be lamenting over my play that day.

 

Thank you to Kody Hoffman and Jeffrey Richardson, the co-chairs of the golf outing.  You can contact them, or Christina, with any questions.

 

Dan Seals

The SBAC will be hosting U.S. House of Representatives Democratic candidate Dan Seals, on June 26th at 12:15p.m., at our Northfield office.  Mr. Seals will speak to the group about the challenges facing small business, which include obtaining credit and battling increasing health care costs. Mr. Seals will also take questions from SBAC members.

We will hold a short policy meeting for members after we talk with Mr. Seals.  We will discuss upcoming candidate meetings, the scheduling of a debate and issues that pertain to local business.

 

The SBAC lending petition, which has been drafted by the SBAC policy committee, will be circulated to our members and posted on our website later this week.  This petition will also be included in our next SBAC newsletter.

Business owners have lost their lines of credit and access to financing because big banks made bad gambles. It has been approximately six months since the government initially proposed making $30 billion of returned TARP money available to small and community banks for lending to small business.  We are going to aggressively push this agenda forward.

Last week's SBAC Blog featured The New York Times Business Plan Competition Guide.  This guide targets opportunities to obtain prizes, grants and loans through business plan competitions across the country.  You can contact our office at (847) 990-7909 or E-mail us for more info about these competitions.

We also posted an article from the Wall Street Journal relating to lending to small business.  Credit-union groups are pushing Washington to ease restrictions on the business loans that can be made to finance smaller businesses.  This proposed legislation is opposed by some in the banking community.

This article provides information about a topic of great concern to small business.  The SBAC has not yet taken a position on this issue and would welcome any comments in that regard.