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Small Businesses Need Your Help
The Growing Crisis for Local Businesses in America
America is quietly losing its small businesses—the corner stores, family-owned shops, independent restaurants, local retailers, and home town manufacturers that give our towns and cities their unique character. The culprit? The unstoppable rise of online shopping giants like Amazon, Walmart.com, and countless other e-commerce sites. Survey after survey (including recent ones from the National Federation of Independent Business and American Express) shows that 80–90% of consumers say they want to “support local” and prefer the idea of shopping small businesses. Yet actual behavior tells a different story:
• Foot traffic in small retail has declined steadily for over a decade
• The U.S. has lost more than 100,000 independent retailers since 2007
• In many small towns, the only new “stores” opening are dollar chains, dispensaries, and electronic gambling.
People aren’t lying in surveys—they genuinely like the idea of local shopping. But when it’s 9 p.m., the kids are finally asleep, and they need diapers, a birthday gift, or something for dinner tomorrow, they open an app and get it delivered in 1–4 days, often with free shipping. Convenience wins every time. And it’s not just about speed. Online shopping has mastered:
• Infinite selection (no shelf-space limits)
• Transparent pricing and reviews
• One-click checkout
• Easy returns
• Personalized recommendations
Local stores simply cannot match that experience with 20th-century tools. The result? Roughly 20–25% of small business closures now happen not because the product or service is bad, but because customers literally never discover the business exists or find it too inconvenient to shop there, close to 50% of new businesses fail in the first five years. (U.S. Chamber of Commerce data).
There Is A Hidden Economic Multiplier You Rarely Hear About
Here’s the part most people miss: where you spend your money determines whether your community thrives or slowly dies.
• When you spend $100 at a national online retailer → only about $7–$14 stays in your local economy (mostly delivery jobs).
• When you spend $100 at an independently owned local business → $65–$75 recirculates in your community.
That local $75 pays:
• Employees who live nearby and spend their paycheck at other local businesses
• Local taxes are paid to support roads, schools, and infrastructure
• Sponsorships for Little League teams, high school booster clubs, charity 5Ks
• Profits that get spent at the local diner, local grocery store, clothing store, hardware store, or movie theater
This is the “local multiplier effect,” documented in study after study (e.g., Civic Economics, American Independent Business Alliance). Every time money leaves the community to a distant corporate headquarters or overseas warehouse, your schools get less funding, roads deteriorate faster, and property taxes have to rise to make up the difference. That’s why you see taxes going up even as services feel like they’re going down. We’re starving our own communities one click at a time.
A Real Solution: Make Local Shopping Win on Convenience
The trend won’t reverse by guilt-tripping people or “Shop Local” bumper stickers. It reverses when local shopping becomes objectively just as easy and fast as Amazon. That’s exactly what we’ve spent the last several years building. Our app and business platform turns every independent store in town into an instant sales store with delivery or same-day pickup options—without forcing small businesses to build their own app, advertise on numerous websites, or pay 15–30% commissions to third-party marketplaces. Here’s how it works for the customer:
• Shop online like usual but with one huge difference. Instead of being directed to importers or warehouses that do not have store fronts, you instantly see inventory from dozens (or hundreds) of local stores around you—clothing, gifts, hardware, pet supplies, bakery items, craft beer, whatever. See flash sales and discounts you would have never known about.
• Search for items and see real stores that have what you want. Easily price compare and add items from multiple stores into one cart (buy a gift at the toy store, flowers next door, and a bottle of wine down the street—all in one checkout).
• Choose how you want to get it, immediate inside pickup, curbside pickup, delivery by local drivers who actually live in your community, or have it shipped to you.
• Pay once, track everything in one place, and earn rewards that can only be spent at local businesses.
For the business owner it’s even simpler: an internet connection that syncs with their existing point-of-sale or even just a spreadsheet. No expensive hardware, no huge fees, no learning curve steeper than posting on Facebook. Fast and easy access to your business listing, make changes immediately for flash sales or whatever is needed. Post videos of your store, staff, models showing your inventory. It’s an unlimited connection to customers. Take reservations and orders directly without having to use multiple services. Added features for businesses is a direct wholesale connection to manufacturers and suppliers, especially small ones who are struggling to get their products into stores. Manufacturers that would love to have a network of retailers all across the U.S. See what shoppers in your community are searching for and be able to decide if it would be a good fit for your inventory. And, businesses get a communications network of other businesses all across the U.S. to see what is working for other stores or what isn’t working and share ideas.
We’re not asking people to sacrifice convenience to “save local.” We’re removing the inconvenience entirely. When local shopping is faster, cheaper, and supports your local community instead of a billionaire’s multiple yachts —people choose local every time.
The Bottom Line
America doesn’t have to watch its small towns turn into ghost towns with nothing but chain stores and empty storefronts. We can keep the soul of our communities and still enjoy 21st-century convenience. But it only happens if we finally give local businesses the same technological superpower that online giants have enjoyed for 20 years. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit—with no investors to enrich and no profits to skim—we have been quietly developing this solution for several years. What began as a dream to level the playing field for independent businesses is now, thanks to the latest advances in artificial intelligence, becoming a full-scale reality. With AI handling real-time inventory synchronization, smart routing for local drivers, predictive demand forecasting for small retailers, and hyper-personalized discovery that actually surfaces your neighborhood’s hidden gems, we’re no longer asking local stores to compete with yesterday’s tools. We’re giving them tomorrow’s infrastructure—at a very low cost to them and with the entire mission focused on community wealth retention instead of extraction.
This isn’t just an app and an AI infused web platform…. It’s the engine for a genuine revival with thousands of independent businesses getting a second life, tens of thousands of local jobs preserved and created, and millions—eventually billions—of dollars flowing back into the neighborhoods, towns, and small cities where they were spent instead of vanishing to distant warehouses, corporate HQs, and offshore tax havens. When the money stays here, new businesses open, schools get funded, streets get paved, youth sports thrive, local charities flourish, and the unique character of American communities stops bleeding out one click at a time. We’re building the future where supporting local is the easiest, fastest, and most rewarding choice—because it finally makes the most sense for everyone. We need your help. To finish it—to roll this out to every city and small town across America—we need your help today. As a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, every dollar goes straight to engineering, on-boarding real local businesses, and reaching out to communities.
We need donors, fundraising professionals, businesses, and corporate sponsors
Are you passionate about helping with a resurgence of small businesses and seeing communities grow again? If you’re a professional fundraiser (major gifts, direct response, digital, planned giving, or corporate partnerships) who is passionate about keeping wealth in American communities instead of watching it siphon offshore, we want to talk to you. This is a rare opportunity to raise significant capital for a mission that is urgently needed, emotionally resonant, and provably impactful. You’ll be selling a vision that business owners, civic leaders, and philanthropists already believe in—they just haven’t seen a scalable solution until now. Our donation site makes it easy for you to help us succeed. It has the option to donate, become a fundraiser, or even form your own team of fundraisers and increase our reach! Outstanding fundraisers and team leaders may receive a salary with bonuses to support their work. Donors will receive a monthly newsletter, the opportunity to join as Beta testers and submit input. Your donation today keeps billions in local hands tomorrow and builds back communities. Donate now. No amount is too small, and every gift is tax-deductible.
