‘The Biggest Impact’
When President Jim McCarthy joined the North Florida Land Trust in 2014, the non-profit conservation organization had a $233,000 budget and a staff of three. In seven years, the trust has grown to 14 full-time employees and a budget of $8 million and has secured protection for more than 25,000 acres.
“The secret to that (success) is finding really good people,” McCarthy says. “But, we have also stayed focused on where we could have the biggest impact.”
The organization achieves its mission of preserving the natural resources, historic places and working lands of North Florida by purchasing or receiving donations of land, as well as by helping public agencies with real estate transactions.
Kelly Harris runs restaurants on Jacksonville’s Southside and Frank Knapp Jr. runs business groups in South Carolina. But on frustrations over roadblocks facing small businesses, they’re in the same place.
That’s why Knapp, president and CEO of the South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce, ended up Monday outside Harris’s Village Bread Café on Philips Highway launching a nine-city swing through Florida to publicize a campaign labeled “Reform the SBA.”
Despite regular statements by politicians that small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy, Knapp said, “the backbone of our economy is deteriorating.”
The campaign highlights concerns about slumping rates of new business startups and asks Floridians to urge members of Congress to create a new federal small-business loan program and give new responsibilities and resources to the U.S. Small Business Administration.
By STEVE PATTERSON | The Florida Times-Union | Published: January 25, 2021 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Tribune News Service) When Demika Jackson started her own company, she found lots of advice for small businesses but felt like there was still something missing. Talking to other Army veterans like her, she heard the same thing. “Many of us had the same kind of challenges,” said Jackson, who wanted a place that understood goals and questions common to vets and their families in business. So, she helped start one. The Jacksonville Veterans Chamber of Commerce is still settling on a permanent home but has begun reaching out to people with military roots as an affiliate of a national organization with chambers in 20 states.