Our Story

This campaign, representing more than 38,000 businesses across the U.S. and Canada, encourages residents to take job creation and economic concerns into their own hands by exercising their power to strengthen their own local economies.

This is an effective strategy all year-round, but especially important at the holidays:  The National Retail Federation reports that holiday shoppers plan to spend an average of $704.18 on holiday gifts and seasonal merchandise in 2011. That’s down slightly from last year, but NRF is still forecasting overall holiday retail sales to grow 2.8 percent during the months of November and December, to $465.6 billion.

Keeping that money in your community will have a proven impact.

Numerous studies have found directing that spending to locally owned, independent businesses will create impressive benefits. For example, a 2008 study of Kent County Michigan by Civic Economics projected shifting 10% of the county’s per capita spending from chains to locally-owned independent businesses would create “almost $140 million in new economic activity and 1,600 new jobs for the region.”

In addition, annual surveys over the last four years show that places that “go local” do better. For example, last year, the Institute for Local Self Reliance gathered data on annual revenue changes from nearly 2,800 independent business. That data revealed independent businesses in communities executing long-term “buy local and independent” campaigns averaged a healthy 5.6 percent increase over the previous year. This gain more than doubled the 2.1 percent increase reported by independent businesses in areas lacking such campaigns. All of those campaigns operated with support from the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) and/or Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

Shift Your Shopping combines the efforts of AMIBA and BALLE with more than 150 local business alliances comprised of over 38,000 local businesses. Grassroots groups like Asheville Grown Business Alliance in North Carolina and Oakland Grown in California will execute campaigns with their own flair, picking and choosing from campaigns like Buy Local First week, America Unchained!, and Plaid Friday, the colorful alternative to Black Friday.

ShiftYourShopping.org provides access to resources from all of these campaigns, including templates that allow anyone to spread the message easily in their community. Anyone can participate and make a direct impact where they live.

How Local Alliances Help Small Businesses Thrive Year Round

The most successful entrepreneurs often do more than just operate a great business—they are local champions who are connected to other businesses and invested in the future of their hometown.

For nearly 10 years now, such like-minded businesses have been uniting through unique, local, grassroots “Think Local First” programs in towns and cities all across the country. They work together to support all locally owned, independent businesses in a community. There are now more than 150 such non-profit groups, and many studies to that show the benefits of a thriving local economy.

How does it work?

A single merchant has limited ability to shift attitudes or consumer spending, but by building strength in numbers, we can create a culture of support for independent business locally and a strong voice to advocate for the interests of local independents and the communities they serve.

Most alliances often start with Buy Local campaigns. These groups may also facilitate group purchasing, cooperative branding, advance pro-local public policy, and more.

Getting started in your town:

Here are the leading resources available to help independent businesses and organizations come together where you live to engage in these activities.

The American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) and Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) provide training and support to local, collaborative networks of independent businesses across the U.S. and Canada.

• AMIBA provides a wide array of tools, templates and support for independent business owners and advocates to launch effective buy local campaigns, organize group purchasing and marketing and advance pro-local policy initiatives. For businesses, their “buy local in a box” is an easy first step.
• BALLE works to catalyze, strengthen and connect networks of locally owned, independent businesses that are connecting the dots between independent retail, sustainable agriculture, green building, renewable energy, community capital, zero-waste manufacturing, and other building blocks of a “Local Living Economy.”

• 
  Indie Bound is a pro-local, pro-independent marketing campaign of the American Booksellers Association, an independent trade association that welcomes and provides support to all types of businesses who want to participate in their Indie Bound campaign.
• The New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, is the go-to source for economic impact studies, pro-local policy examples and other research that documents the power of local ownership, provides you with a case for growing it in your community, and how to advance it with better public policy. Their Community Banking Initiative provides unique resources.

Remember, you don’t necessarily need to lead a local alliance, you just need to get things started. We’re here to help.