If you’ve recently liked a small business on Facebook, then maybe you’ve also seen a Mission: Small Business ad—a program sponsored by Chase Bank and LivingSocial where up to 12 small businesses will each receive $250,000 grants—asking you to vote for your favorite indie businesses.
Or, maybe a local business you support has directly reached out to you via its Facebook page, email, Twitter, or another avenue requesting you to log on to Mission: Small Business and vote. If you happen to be someone who supports and follows many small businesses (ahem, someone like me), your email inbox and Facebook feed may be overflowing with these vote-for-me pleas.
I have received Mission: Small Business vote requests from a dozen small businesses over the past few weeks. Most of these businesses have made multiple requests, so it’s a little annoying, but it’s also intriguing to watch the Mission: Small Business campaign go viral within the small business community. More than 10,000 small businesses all over the country have been actively asking their customers for their vote.
Why are so many small businesses taking part in Mission: Small Business? Money.
Anywhere from four to 12 lucky Mission: Small Business winners will receive $250,000 grants to help grow their businesses. Although multi-million dollar tax credits, zero-interest loans, and grants may get dangled in front of bigger businesses to the point where cities and states compete against each other to see who can give the most free money to a business considering expansion, free money isn’t something that often trickles down to small businesses. And this is a trickle.
Mission Command: Chase Bank and LivingSocial
The deep pockets behind Mission: Small Business belong to Chase Bank and LivingSocial.
Chase hasn’t enjoyed a very good year in the press. Actually, it has seen a few years of bad news and lost public standing because of its lending and investment practices. The drama of its recent $2 billion trading loss continues to play out as Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has changed from defiant to supplicant.
LivingSocial and its parent company Amazon have also experienced some public infamy in the past few years. During the 2011 holiday season, Amazon released a mobile app that gave shoppers an incentive to go to local brick-and-mortar stores to browse but make their purchase on Amazon, and it even offered a one-day promotion that provided a discount to its customers who used the price check feature. LivingSocial, like its competitor Groupon, has employed marketing practices that have been viewed by some small businesses as predatory and exploitative. Of course, Amazon continues to employ practices around the country that allow it to avoid collecting sales taxes that local businesses are responsible for.
These companies could certainly use some good will within the small business community. If participation in Mission: Small Business reflects the price of that good will, apparently $3 million will do it.
To the average person or small business, $3 million is significant, but it’s important to remember that one of the companies contributing to this pot wanted to shrug off a $2 billion loss. Chase and Amazon are not just billion dollar companies, they are multi-billion dollar companies. Three million dollars isn’t pocket change for these companies, it’s pocket lint.
Mission Objective: Getting To Know You
As with any online contest, and anything on Facebook, the Mission: Small Business terms and conditions are extensive and exceedingly boring to read. However, the contest terms, especially its policies related to what personal information is collected and how it may be used, point to what Chase and LivingSocial really hope to get in return for these grants: to get to know you better. They also hedge their bets to make sure they get to know as many people as possible.
All the contest marketing has trumpeted $3 million in grants from day one, but Chase and LivingSocial didn’t really pledge that level of funding. Instead, they committed to $1 million in grants with an option to add “an additional $2 million... based on consumer participation in the Program." Consumer participation in this case is voters on the site.
To reach the $3 million mark, roughly 400,000 people need to vote. And with approximately 65,000 small businesses participating, that benchmark has been blown away. By my estimate, more than 8 million people voted in the contest, maybe even 10 million or more. And those millions of people voted via a Facebook app that gleaned personal data and provided it to Chase and LivingSocial for their use.
How can Chase and LivingSocial use the personal data they collected?
There are nearly no restrictions. This includes the right for them to share your info with third parties even though “some of those companies may be located in countries that do not require an equivalent or greater level of protection of Personal Information [as here in the United States]."
Time For A New Mission?
Most small business owners are not blind to all this.
I asked a number of business owners taking part in Mission: Small Business if they had any concerns about who was sponsoring the contest.
Mike Rainville, president of Maple Landmark Woodcraft, summed up the view of every small business owner with whom I spoke: “My local bank doesn't offer this kind of opportunity. Obviously the sponsors are looking to get something in return; that is how it works.”
Many business owners, like Peter Rossing of Muse Art and Design, used the contest application as a chance to take a look in the mirror.
“How often do any of us as small business owners get away from the day-to-day and sit down and put into written form how our businesses are unique, how we serve our communities, and how we plan to meet challenges in our business plan?” Rossing asks. “Any small business owner who takes the time to really think through these things is creating an opportunity to rise above what most businesses of any size ever do.”
This all speaks to the sobering truth behind the success of Mission: Small Business. Although participating businesses know that the chance to win is slim (less than two in 10 thousand) and don’t see eye to eye with the contest presenters, the potential access to grant money is simply too rare an opportunity to pass up.
So, the lesson to be learned from Mission: Small Business may not be the one many of us already recognize. Namely, it’s not that a company isn’t going to lay out $3 million without making sure they get more than that value in return.
Instead, it may be time for a new mission: a mission that creates more real funding opportunities for small businesses where the return on investment isn’t personal data and manufactured good will but authentic business growth and new local jobs.
What are the other options for small businesses to get the funds they need to grow? Would you contribute to a grant fund pool to support small businesses in your community or around the country?
This article resonated with me, because I actually intend to use the grant proceeds to launch a local culinary scholarship and grant fund to help people start small food businesses. I also want to bring together the dozens of incubator kitchens across the country to share resources.
We learned a great deal from this excperience and despite falling 9 votes short, we are fighting to get the 30+ votes from people that tried to vote but were kicked off the site by consistent error messages to count. You can read about our experience on our blog here:http://kitchenincubator.com/blog/missionsmallbusines
I think it will resonate with everyone who participated in the Mission: Small Business endeavor.
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