New York SBDC Research Network

As Hurricane Katrina pounds the south, with damage estimated in the billions of dollars, businesses are forced to activate disaster plans, backing up systems and many are already trying to deal with the aftermath. This brings to mind how often many businesses are not fully prepared for catastrophic events. There is an enormous amount of information available about how to go about it. I’ve listed just a few sites that offer tips and checklists. Something to think about. SBA’s Disaster Preparedness Considerations on the SBA website offers tips on creating a disaster planning toolkit covering issues such as operations, insurance and communications. Expect the Unexpected Create a monster plan to disaster-proof your business.Business Start-Ups magazine - January 1997 By Julie Cook Books in our collection: Alesch, Daniel J. ; Holly, James N.; Nagy, Robert Organizations at risk: What happens when small businesses and not-for-profits encounter natural disasters Schneid, Thomas D. Disaster

[Here's an article from the Census Bureau. The nformation particularly pertinent to New York State is in italics .] The first observance of Labor Day is believed to have been a parade on Sept. 5, 1882, in New York City, probably organized by Peter J. McGuire, a Carpenters and Joiners Union secretary. By 1893, more than half the states were observing a "Labor Day" on one day or another, and a bill to establish a federal holiday was passed by Congress in 1894. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill soon afterward, designating the first Monday in September as Labor Day. Who Are We Celebrating? 149.1 million Number of people age 16 or older in the nation's labor force in May 2005. Among the nation's workers are 80.0 million men and 69.1 million women. These men and women represent 66 percent of the civilian noninstitutionalized adult population. Employee Benefits 82% Percentage of full-time workers age 18 to 64 covered by health insurance during all or part of 2

Not long ago, Mary Beth posted a blog on Web sites & other resources that exist as forums for people to report scams. Good thing I knew about some of them, because recently we've had our very own scam to contend with. Last March, I received a faxed invoice from ProMedia Resources, a company reputedly based in New Jersey. Soon after, a rep from the company called as a follow-up. He claimed that, five years earlier, we entered into an agreement to have our library contact information included on a CD-ROM directory of theirs titled the "American Business Resource Guide". The five years, he said, were up, and we owed them $400. This smelled fishy, as we don't enter into multi-year agreements as a matter of practicality. Nor are we interested in marketing our private services to the general public - we exist solely to serve the New York SBDC staff. I do research for a living. A preliminary investigation of mine found that no one affiliated with the Research Netwo

Mark Wan called the Research Network recently. Besides asking a reference question, he added a personal note: He's engaged! We at the Research Network extend our congratulations to Mark and his bride-to-be. Best, Darrin, Josée, Mary Beth and Roger Today's blog is the first of a new series, "The Occasional Friday Blog," providing news of interest to the NYS SBDC community on an irregular basis at the discretion of the Research Network. If you would like to contribute, please call the Central office at x.149.

Have you had a news article printed about your center? Send us articles and press releases to add to the News page —examples include: center quotes for articles profiles of clients in the news press releases generated internally or by your host college, and anything else noteworthy. Electronic copies are preferred, but not required. Also, the Central office will need to get permission from the publisher to post articles on the Web site so be sure to include the date the article appeared and the name of the newspaper/magazine. Visit the News page for updates from around the state at http://www.nyssbdc.org/News/news.cfm . Send news items to Mary Beth, m.bobish at nyssbdc.org.

JK3430.P976 2001 New York Public Sector: JK671.F43 2005 Federal yellow book: JK3430.N49 2005-2006 New York State directory 2005/2006 Peachtree accounting 2005 (software) HD62.5 .L53 1996 Gregg A Lichtenstein; Thomas S Lyons Incubating new enterprises: HD30.28 .R644 2004 Rogoff, Edward G., Bankable business plans / TK5105.888.N54 1996 Niederst, Jennifer. ; Freedman, Edie. Designing for the web: HV7936.S56 1999 The NRA range sourcebook HD61 .R378 2004 Author Reiss, Claire Lee. Title Risk management for small business /

How Many People Move Each Year – and Who Are They? By David Bancroft Avrick Over the past quarter century I’ve heard dozens of different statistics about the percentage of people that move every year. These guesstimates have varied from a low of 10 percent to a high of 25 percent. When people move, your database takes a hit. So let’s look at who moves and why. Using the information provided by the U. S. Census Bureau, let’s clear up the confusion and misinformation. Out of a population of 282,556,000 people, 40,093,000 moved. That’s an overall percentage of 14.19 percent annually. These 40-plus-million people break down as follows: 23,468,000 (58.51%) moved within the same county, 7,728,000 (19.28%) moved to a different county within the same state, 7,628,000 (19.03%) moved to a different state, and 1,269,000 (3.17%) moved to a different country. The percentage of population that moves, when broken down by age, varies considerably – from a low of 1.55 percent to a high of 17.84 per