Wow! Hannah West Design, parent company of the Southern Oregon Artists Resource, was nominated for the SBA Small Business Champion and Home-Based Business of the Year and they have accepted our nomination! YOU can help us win this prestigious honor! Just write a letter telling the SBA how SOAR has helped your business or has otherwise positively impacted the community and email it to soar@soartists.com, and we’ll include it in the info package we send them. They tell us that the sooner they receive everything, the better able they will be to review it by decision time, so if you could take a little time at your earliest convenience to write something nice for us, we’d be very grateful! To help you with the details of your letter, here are the elements that Champions will be judged on (for my beloved artists and art-related businesses/organizations, just translate “small business” into “artists and art-related businesses” to understand what they’re looking for and tell them something about your experience with me as a web designer/workshop instructor/champion of your art business through SOAR):

· Volunteer efforts beyond business/professional responsibilities to advance small business interests within the community, state and/or nation

· Demonstrated efforts to improve conditions in the small business community as a whole, not solely for individual personal advancement; Volunteer efforts to provide professional services to the small business community in a legal, legislative, managerial or financial capacity

· Demonstrated accomplishments in advising small business groups of opportunities within the overall business community

· Other accomplishments demonstrating the nominee’s merit as an effective advocate for small business interests.