LI groups' joint meeting kicks off series to support small businesses

Long Island’s business community needs to more collaborative and inclusive to support small enterprises, the president of the area's biggest business advocacy group said Thursday.

As part of the Long Island Association’s efforts to provide more resources for small businesses, the group held the first gathering in a new series of quarterly joint membership meetings with the Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce and Long Island Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

More than 60 people representing businesses, nonprofits and government agencies attended the Thursday morning meeting in the Melville building where the LIA is headquartered.

“The goal of the event is to show that the Long Island Association wants to partner with local chambers of commerce to provide resources, support and guidance to the small business community,” particularly as many businesses are still trying to recover from losses suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Matt Cohen, president and CEO of the LIA.

Small businesses, particularly those owned by people of color, were disproportionately affected, he said.

Businesses owned by people of color were more likely to seek pandemic-related financial assistance but less likely to receive it than white-owned businesses last year, according to a June report from the Small Business Credit Survey conducted by 12 Federal Reserve Banks.

In 2021, 70% of white-owned businesses received all the federal Paycheck Protection Program funding for which they applied, but the same could be said for just 55% of Asian-owned businesses, 44% of Hispanic-owned businesses and 31% of Black-owned businesses, according to the report.

“Our biggest need for members is basically access to capital and being able to qualify for whatever loans come out,” said Luis A. Vazquez, president and CEO of the Hispanic chamber.

There also is a need for more member training on ways to expand businesses, and the new partnership among the three groups will make providing those services easier because the chambers have a small number of volunteer leaders, said Phil Andrews, president of the African American chamber.

Since Cohen took over LIA leadership in May 2021, he has been working to change the perception that the group is focused only on large businesses, he said.

The quarterly meeting series that started Thursday is part of the LIA's Small Business Support Program, on which it is partnering with the two chambers and which was announced in June.

New initiatives include roundtable discussions, which will start in November, with experts focused on topics critical to small-business growth, and a new, cheaper LIA membership tier for businesses with 10 or fewer employees, said Stacey I. Sikes, LIA’s vice president of government affairs and communications.

Business leadership initiatives need to be more inclusive of unrepresented groups, said Su Chen, co-owner of a TeamLogic IT franchise, a Valley Stream-based provider of information technology services, and a member of the Urban League of Long Island’s board of directors.

“It’s just trying to have more seats at that table and trying to be included as a small business, as a medium-sized business, as a woman-owned business … Everybody should be represented,” she said after attending Thursday's meeting.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.com@ToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.