By Sarah Stephens, Director of Communication and Marketing at the Cleveland Bradley Chamber of Commerce

There is no denying that small businesses and nonprofits were dealt a difficult hand in 2020. Many across the nation are still fighting to save their organizations as states begin to lift restrictions. And our local small business community was not immune to these same difficulties. Even in the midst of these business challenges, two local small business leaders have kept their focus on giving back to the community and have launched a new program specifically to support local nonprofits. It’s called the Small Biz Give and it was created by Brittany Katz of Cleveland Coffee & Market, and Andrea Boddeker of Carroll Printing Company. We were intrigued by this new partnership between two of our Chamber members so we sat down with both women to learn more about this program and how it works.

Chamber: First, tell us a little more about this program.

Brittany: Each month we will be donating a portion of proceeds from each of our businesses to a nonprofit that is here in Cleveland. We wanted a way to get the community involved in the giving that we do with our businesses every month anyway, to put some structure around it so we could share all the great things the nonprofits in our community are doing and how we as small businesses can help them.

Chamber: What brought this about? Can you tell us more about why you decided to do this?

Andrea: Brittany and I work together a lot. We were talking one day about things happening in our community and how we want to be involved and it sort of developed itself. We were talking about how we both support nonprofits and various
different entities throughout the community, but we don’t really tell that story well. We wanted to put some legs to that…and not just continue giving ourselves but involve people in the community and engage them in that giving. We thought this might be an interesting way to help show creative ways we support our community and give people a little bit different opportunity to join us.

Chamber: How do each of your businesses participate in the Small Biz Give?

Brittany: Cleveland Coffee & Market is giving all our proceeds on Tuesdays to that month’s Small Biz Give recipient. Every Tuesday is Giving Tuesday. And each Tuesday we hope the community can get involved by supporting our small business and in turn they know we'll be supporting that month's nonprofit.

Andrea: Carroll Printing Company is giving a portion of all our sales/proceeds to the Small Biz Give which then donates into that nonprofit organization of the month. We decided to do it that way because most of our customers will come to us one day and place an order and pay when they pick up or pay through a PO system, so it wasn't exactly the same; we couldn't really identify a day that we could do it, so we're giving a portion of all our sales, whether it's apparel, screen printing, paper printing or even promotional items.

The first organization to receive funds from the Small Biz Give was Free 2 Fly, a nonprofit that supports, nurtures and
empowers women who have recently completed rehabilitation programs. The Chamber team followed along as Brittany and Andrea, armed with a check and ringing cowbells, presented the February Small Biz Give donation to the organization's president, Haley Johnston.

Andrea: We are super excited about the number of people who came and shared with us that they wanted to help support Free 2 Fly. We are excited that we have had a longstanding relationship with Project Free 2 Fly and we were thrilled to be able to share with them this month.

Haley: We are so grateful for this support and for you guys coming alongside our work here in our community.

Nonprofits interested in applying for the Small Biz Give should complete the application at tinyurl.com/SmallBizGiveCleveland.