What Buying Local Means
• For every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $73 remains in the local economy, and $27 leaves a community. For every $100 spent at a non-locally owned business, $43 remains in the local economy, and $57 leaves a community. When you shop locally owned businesses, your money is recirculated over and over and creates up to 75% more tax revenue to your community and state.
• Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent with non-locally owned. When shopping locally, you simultaneously create jobs, fund more city services through sales tax, invest in neighborhood improvement and promote community development.
• Get better service: Local businesses often hire people with a better understanding of your needs and take more time to get to know customers. Create more good jobs: Small local businesses are the largest employer nationally, providing the most jobs to local residents.
• Charitable Contributions, small businesses donate about twice as much per employee to charitable organizations. Locally owned businesses support community groups: Non-profit organizations receive an average 250% more support from smaller business owners than they do from large businesses. Locally owned businesses build strong neighborhoods by sustaining communities, linking neighbors, and by contributing more to local causes.
• Buy Local — Support yourself: Several studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally owned business, rather than a nationally owned businesses, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers and farms — continuing to strengthen the economic base of the community.
• Buy what you want, not what someone wants you to buy: selecting products based not on a national sales plan but on your own interests and the needs of your local customers.
• Keep our community unique: Where we shop, where we eat and have fun –all of it makes our community home. Locally owned businesses are an integral part of the distinctive character of our community. Local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
• Reduce environmental impact: independently owned businesses can make more local purchases and local deliveries, requiring less transportation.
