Spending your money from independent small businesses benefits you, our local economy, and our community. Here are 6 things that happen when you commit to spend and think local first.
1. You Put Your Money Where Your Heart Is
When you spend locally, your money stays local. You support your friends, neighbors, and yourself. Money invested in local businesses helps to create a stronger, diverse, and healthier Billings.
2. What Goes Around Comes Around
Two to three times as much money spent stays in our local (City & State) economy when you buy goods and services from locally-owned businesses.
3. Create Local Jobs
The majority of new jobs for your friends, family, and neighbors are created by locally-owned businesses. Small businesses are the largest employer nationally.
4. Create Collective Prosperity
Locally-owned businesses invest more in local labor, pay more local taxes, and provide local non-profits with 250% more support than larger, non-locally owned business.
5. Invest in People Who Invest in Billings
Local business are owned and ran by people who live in and love Billings. They are less likely to leave and are invested in Billings’ future. Small business owners often sit on local boards and make local purchases themselves.
6. Community Sustainability
The public benefit outweighs public cost as local businesses help sustain a vibrant, compact, and walkable downtown core -essential to reducing sprawl and require comparatively less infrastructure investment and efficient use of public services as compared to national stores entering a community.