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Small Businesses

Numerous studies have amply and consistently demonstrated the importance of small businesses in our national economy. According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses are extremely important to the U.S. economy because they:

• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ just over half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the past 15 years.
• Create more than half of the non-farm private gross domestic product (GDP).
• Hire 40 percent of high tech workers (such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers).
• Are 52 percent home-based and 2 percent franchises.
• Represented 97.3 percent of all identified exporters and produced 30.2 percent of the known export value in FY 2007.
• Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.

Also, small businesses drive creativity and innovation. Their ideas are eventually transformed into commercial products that generate new services, spawn additional products and provides for improved productivity in the office or factory and greater convenience, safety and comfort at home. The list of innovations developed in the 40 years by these "garage"-based enterprises in fields such as electronics, software, computers, mobile phones, medical diagnostic equipment, aerospace, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals to name a few, is awesome. The innovations made possible by start-up businesses such as Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Microsoft or Genentech, be it in a garage or in a laboratory, are literally revolutionizing how we live and work.

By and large, small businesses are the greatest motivators of change and one of the major risk takers in the US economy. Furthermore, small businesses provide support and synergies while working side by side with large businesses. They provide services and inputs to the production process, train workers, and are a primary means of marketing and distributing retail products and services. At the same time, large businesses depend on small businesses to strengthen and diversify their supply chains (i.e., activities that transform raw materials and components into a finished product) and ultimately, maximize value creation while minimizing production costs.

What is the MAHCC doing to protect small businesses?

As a business organization with a membership of predominantly small, minority, women and veteran-owned businesses, one of our main priorities is to ensure that laws and regulations do not interfere excessively with the conduct of business and that access to capital does not become a rate-limiting activity.

Also, as a regional Chamber centered in the Nation's capital, we are strong advocates for the participation of our members in state and federal procurement. We work closely together with state and federal organizations such as the Small Business Administration, Department of Commerce, Export/Import Bank, etc.  Also, we join force with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, SCORE,  U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Maryland and Virginia Chambers of Commerce and over a dozen local Chambers to advocate for and protect small businesses.

Finally, the Chamber cultivates relationships of trust with local, regional and national banks that are receptive to the unique needs of small businesses.  In doing so, the Chamber helps facilitate better channels of communication between lenders and members as well as by means of seminars and workshops, the Chamber helps prepare members to comply with loan-application requirements.

Effective advocacy for small business: 
                     Another reason to join the MAHCC!