Special Meeting Buy Native Campaign

REGIONAL INDIAN BUSINESS ALLIANCE

Special Meeting – Buy Native Campaign

Date: June 21, 2016

Time: 9:00 am – 11:00 am CST

Location: Webinar

MINUTES

Present:Kim Strand, Stacey LaCompte, Marcella Hurley, Barth Robinson, Jan Anderson, Mike Mabin, Barbara Stiffarm, Pamela Standing

Present by Invitation: Jeff Milchen, Director and Jennifer Rockne, Co-Directors, American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) in Bozeman, Montana

Jeff Milchen and Jennifer Rocknehosted a webinar and provided a historical background on the Buy Local movement and how AMIBA assists Buy Local campaigns and Independent Business Alliances form and grow across the U.S. Jeff shared several stories of how local businesses co-opted together to create branded materials to lower and share costs, and shared examples of rural initiatives that could apply to what we are trying to do to support native-owned businesses and entrepreneurship.

Pamela mentioned she has been following, researching and collecting data on the Buy Local movement, and how RIBA could culturally contextual these approaches and messaging to impact Indian Country.

The most successful campaigns are largely driven by independently-owned businesses. Our goal is to create both physical and virtual main street businesses in our tribal communities. Our current job is to raise visibility of our tribal citizen-owned businesses, both on and off the reservations.

As we move forward, it is important to develop statewide campaigns that include education, educational materials, branding and marketing tools to build the Buy Native Movement.

We have the new online directory to attract outside interest, to create a platform to build native-to-native purchasing, kinship purchasing between tribal communities/businesses, tribal government, tribal institution and native nonprofit purchases. Additionally, the new web site can offer landing pages to use to bring people to the directory and sign a pledge to purchase from a native business, to increase institutional purchasing and increase native-to-native purchases.

AMIBA’s staff has years of experience and materials and an extensive resource library for its members, that can be adapted with native-centric messaging. They are willing to host a Buy Native page for us to collect and maintain a library of resources for Indian Countryunless/until we are ready to launch a stand-alone website to serve this purpose. They already adapted three of their “Why Buy Local?” banners with “Why Buy Native?” messages we suggested to them for groups serving Indian Country and put some into the shape of IBA states as examples:

1. Build a Vibrant Private Sector
2. Economic Sovereignty
3. Enhance Local Democracy

The graphics are part of a draft resource page for Indian Business Alliances and Buy Native campaigns at amiba.net/buy-indian. Other resources includeAMIBA’s recommendations for designing collective logos and taglines (with examples) and examples of websites that do various functions well, including AMIBA’s template for a member recruitment page with ideas on potential member benefits and how to present them. They also cover 501c3 and 501c6 tax exempt status and benefits. AMIBA offers a fiscal agent sponsorship for members who wish to accept foundation grants or tax-deductible contributions from individuals (five percent of such gifts go to AMIBA to cover their program administration costs).

AMIBA’s team is very interested in partnering with the RIBAs and are offering to extend the first “year” or affiliation from 12 months to 18 to any of our IBAs. Additionally, they are offering a major group incentive: if four or more of the state IBAs affiliate with AMIBA, they will reduce the cost for the initial affiliation period of 18 months from $950 to $550 for each IBA.

AMIBA is ready to dedicate substantial time to working with the RIBA leadership teams to adapt various materials to our unique needs and preference, as exhibited by the Buy Native page and adapted Buy Native banners they have created. They also have a special interest in helping out where they can be useful in bringing specific concerns of IBAs to a larger audience through media assistance or other means. They are eager to learn how they can help advance our work and excited about the opportunity to learn about ourwork in order to cross-pollinate ideas and tools that will strengthen all of the groups that comprise AMIBA.

Jeff believes successful work partnering among our organizations will bring us additional funding opportunities for all of us in the long-term. He wants to be transparent about all AMIBA does.. If anyone has questions, please feel free to contact Jeff via email at: or contact Pamela via email at .

Minnesota is ready to move forward, this is part of our strategic plan. During the meeting at the Montana Indian Business Conference in May 2016, it was placed as a new priority for all the IBAs moving forward.

Next Steps:

IBA Members review materials posted to the AMIBA website and sample banners developed by AMIBA for a Buy Native Theme.

We will need to recruit a working group (like we did with the business directory) that can convene in between RIBA meetings and report back to the entire leadership team.

For those IBA’s who join AMIBA, Include Jeff on our calls as we move forward to strategize and begin the development a “Buy Native logo” that can be shared across the IBAs, something that identifies this campaign, but we can each add out IBA logos to them.

Speak with other Independent Business Alliances and review their budgets and strategies as a template for us moving forward to include; costs for joining AMIBA, graphic design and printing costs for educational materials, branded materials and logo design, marketing materials (i.e., Buy Native lapel pins, something where like businesses can go in together and have name/website/etc. linked to the branded materials, etc. Costs to develop the landing pages and a campaign launch strategy.

Next Meeting: Pamela and Stacey will schedule a conference call for the Buy Native work group

Adjourn: 11:00 am

Respectfully submitted by: Pamela Standing, Minnesota Indian Business Alliance