Local First Arizona’s new campaign has proud Arizonans understandably excited.
“Shift Arizona” is an initiative designed to raise awareness of the myriad benefits of supporting small businesses. With the launching of the Shift Arizona movement, LFA seeks to apply lessons learned from a recent Grand Rapids, MI study that demonstrated enormous job creation, wage increase and community development potentials of spending locally.
Data from Grand Rapids showed that if each of that city’s 600,000 people committed just 10% of their expenditures to local establishments, 1600 new jobs and $50 million in local wages would be created in only one year. Now imagine if Arizona’s 6.5 million residents did the same here. 10% of a median (U.S. Census, 2005-2007) Arizona household income is $4,775; if each of us spent that amount locally, that’s over $31 billion flowing back into our state. Wow!
LFA’s Tucson Newsletter Editor Deanna Chevas, Tucson Membership Coordinator Lisette DeMars, and Executive Director Kimber Lanning are fired up about Shift Arizona.
“Tons of Arizona businesses provide common, everyday needs,” they remind us, mentioning Basha’s, BedMart, Quik Mart and Hickman’s Eggs to name a few. And supporting locally owned businesses isn’t just sound economic policy. More often than not, the service and product quality at independent, locally owned restaurants and shops is far superior to the mass-produced fare available at national chains.
Ready to get started? Take the pledge at ShiftArizona.com. There you’ll find an online calculator for quantifying the degree of local economic investment made possible by your 10% shift in shopping habits.
“When a customer chooses to buy from folks living in their own community, three times more of that money stays right here in Tucson,” DeMars says. Grand Canyon State mayors will be comparing the relative impact of increased local spending in each of their communities. Rise to the challenge, Tucsonans!
Let’s outdo our neighbors statewide in local spending. “Keep your money where your home is” by browsing a directory of local businesses at LocalFirstAZ.com.
