A Business Reference Toolkit

Portals Workshop
November 29, 2006
Presenter's Notes

Finding Funding

Consumer Demographics

Industry Information

Company Information

Business Ratios

All-purpose sites

Finding Funding -- Starting Points

• Small Business Planner at the Small Business Administration
• Small Business Development Center National Information Clearinghouse
• Oregon Small Business Wizard
• SBA -- Oregon
• Oregon Economic Development
• Portland Development Commission business assistance guide
• SBA -- Washington
• Washington Business Licensing Guide
• Washington Economic Development

Finding Funding -- More Options

• Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum (Includes SW Washington; Angel Investors Workshops)
• Acción USA (microcredit, nationwide)
• MercyCorps (microcredit, Portland/Vancouver)
• Washington CASH (microcredit, Washington)
• The Money Tree (Venture Capital, requires registration)

Getting Additional Start-up Help

• "Hire" an MBA student or contact the Business Outreach Program (Portland State University)
• Oregon Natural Step (Sustainability workshops)
• PDX Fx Portland network of female entrepreneurs
• Sample business plans

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Consumer Demographics

• Consumer Expenditure Survey -- Bureau of Labor Statistics

Consumer Expenditure Survey exercises
• Household Spending: Who Spends How Much on What -- New Strategist publications

Householding Spending exercises
• American FactFinder and State and County Quick Facts -- Census Bureau
• Community Tapestry Zip Code Profiles

Industry Information

• U.S. Census Bureau Economic Census
• Economic Census Release Schedule
• Other Census Bureau Economic Programs

Economic Census exercises
• Consumer Satisfaction Index

CSI exercises

Company Information

Yahoo! Finance

• Ticker symbol look-up (not automatic)
• Historical prices: Dow Jones Industrial Average from 10/01/1928 (but glitch!), dates vary for other stocks
• Graph stock price comparison with major competitors as well as indexes
• 3 years annual financial data
• More international coverage than Google

Google Finance

• Ticker symbol look-up automatic
• No historic stock price info
• Look up public & private companies – Private content taken from Hoover’s but no financials
• Graph stock price comparison with major competitors as well as indexes
• 6 years annual income, balance sheet, cash flow
• Adding international coverage

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Business Ratios

RMA Annual Statement Studies (pdf)

Almanac of Business and Industrial Financial Ratios (Troy)(pdf)

BizStats.com

More Business Reference Help

• ALA/RUSA/BRASS Best of the Best Business Websites
• Best of BUSLIB-L
• Business Interest Group of Oregon 2006 OLA conference program
• MIT Dewey Library Research Advisor

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Last updated on November 28, 2006