It’s getting more regular, that we are thought of as being funded

During our many conversations with local businesses and organisations whereby we’re gauging interest in them being a member. Time and time again we’re asked “are you funded”? If we’re not asked the question outright, the assumption is that we are.

For some reason, we used to take this as a negative (perhaps because we’re not funded), but the more we talk to organisations the more we think “we must be on to a winner here” – or could it be that what we have produced is of equal standing, and the perception of us as such an organisation is out there done without being funded with substantial amounts of money is possibly hard to believe.

Must be a pride thing, Who knows..! But to be totally and utterly honest even we don’t fully understand the workings of public bodies and it would seem that they themselves don’t understand. Also from our discussions attempted and otherwise, they do not really understand the workings of a small business or to put it another way a private enterprise.

Don’t get us wrong if anyone who is out there has a bit of pull and can point us in the right direction for (a bit of) funding then please be our guest. But where the Connect WM site is now, what we have implemented thus far… not one bean, farthing or penny have we had in funding or grants!.

Haven’t we done well?

When talking to local authorities and publically funded organisations at times it’s like speaking in a totally different language, they're apparent and assumed superiorness, the words they use, how things have to be referred and how no one on the front line really seems to know who should be dealing with what.

An instance of what we’re saying here is that we’ve been trying to make contact with varying local authorities throughout the West Midlands region regarding their procurement requirements being channelled via us. But when even just trying to contact the right person nothing seems standardised. Is it the procurement department who we need to speak to, which of course would make sense, but then we’re told by some local authorities that no it’s not - it’s the business and economic department – which when talking to them proves it isn’t. All that happens is that we get passed from pillar to post, either proving the point in the front line staff not knowing who is doing what or they are not bothered or even so far as being overprotective to even warrant a further discussion.

Venting off here for the small business, it’s no wonder that it’s disheartening for local businesses in them feeling that there’s too much red tape – more so now than what there used to be.

Perhaps the old adage is true….” it’s not what you know – it’s who you know”

For us, we’re just keeping our heads down and plodding on still actively seeking ways to develop the site as a genuine benefit for local businesses based within the West Midlands.

We know that what we have is viable; we know that it’s a tool that even local authorities can utilise to fulfilling at least a small part of their obligations to small businesses within their ward and without them spending untold amounts of public money individually.

We like many small businesses experience extreme frustration in talking to local authorities and in them not seeing the bigger picture or actually seeing it but them not being in a position to do anything because their hands are tied - at times because of their own red tape.

It can be frustrating talking to a department within a local authority that provides similar services to that of a small business such as us, yet they get funding of sorts European or otherwise and the small business does not, up until 6 months ago any local authority department providing similar services of a small business doesn’t have to make a profit, or to be more specific make revenue in order to keep operating - Now they’re having to become monetised to facilitate their operation much like a small business.

In talking to various local businesses which purport to help local businesses it would seem that because they're funded that somehow this negates them from trying to operate like a normal business in terms of its promotion.

What we mean here is, when such a company is approached it will always pull out the “we’re a non for profit organisation so we don’t pay to advertise”.

Perhaps we’re on our own here, but we can’t get our heads around this because if such an organisation was say looking to help in the distributing of finance in the West Midlands and a small local business made a finance application to them without any marketing/promotion spend in the business plan…..it would get thrown out or at the very least on their advice be addressed to include a spend.

Now could it be fair for us to assume that to get where we are now is quite amazing considering that we’ve not had help, the current climate, and the fact that we’ve had the true grit and determination to do such a thing…!

We are a small business just like many others; please don’t read this as us moaning that we’ve had no funding because we know that many local businesses in the West Midlands are also in the same boat.

What we’re doing here is highlighting and will continue to do so from time to time, what it is as a small business we’ve done, what we’re trying to do and what views and opinions we come up against in the daily running and development of the Connect WM business.