Complete Blue Ribbon Recommendations

THE NATIONAL BLUE RIBBON PANEL ON SELF-EMPLOYMENT, SMALL BUSINESS AND DISABILITY JULY 31, 1998

Here is the full list of recommendations reported by the four workgroups at the Blue Ribbon Panel meeting. Each problem statement is followed by a series of recommendations. Because the groups worked independently, there is some duplication of suggestions. The recommendations have been edited for readability without changing the meaning of the content.

FINANCE GROUP

Entrepreneurs with disabilities do not have access to the sources of support and technical assistance available to other entrepreneurs.

• Develop a national mentor network, a system of matching appropriate mentors and proteges with disabilities in one-to-one relationships. Mentors would assist proteges with establishing credit, developing and implementing a business plan, developing resources and provide continuing support after the business is operating. The network could be developed with the assistance of local resources such as vocational rehabilitation counselors and independent living centers.
• National and state vocational rehabilitation programs should promote self-employment and small business ownership for their clients.
• National and state vocational rehabilitation programs should partner with organizations and agencies such as the Small Business Administration.
• The Rehabilitation Services Administration (RSA) should issue a technical assistance circular on self-employment to state vocational rehabilitation programs.
• RSA should develop legislative changes for facilitating small business development by people with disabilities for the next amending cycle of the Rehabilitation Act.

Entrepreneurs with disabilities have limited access to capital.

• Create opportunities for entrepreneurs with disabilities to more readily access capital, including overcoming the lack of owners equity available to most entrepreneurs with a disabilities.
• RSA should encourage state vocational rehabilitation programs to set aside a portion of innovation and expansion funds to be used as equity grants for clients who have approved small business plans. The grants could serve as the entrepreneur's equity to leverage Small Business Administration (SBA) loan guarantees.
• RSA should establish pilot programs in one or two states, using either grants or a revolving loan fund to provide owner's equity for securing SBA loan guarantees for up to $100,000, for both business start-ups and for continuation of existing business. Results from the pilot programs should be disseminated quickly within the vocational rehabilitation system via rehab-net.
• A national investment corporation should be developed as a private source of capital for people with disabilities. Investors would include major Wall Street financial firms and large national and regional banks. Successful business owners with disabilities would select business plans from entrepreneurs with disabilities to fund.
• Encourage state councils on disabilities and developmental disability councils to offer grants to entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) should develop a program to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities by educating bankers and lending institutions about the potential of people with disabilities to be entrepreneurs and about fair loan practices for people with disabilities.
  
  (1) Develop educational packets.
  (2) Distribute educational materials through its fifty state liaisons.
  (3) Utilize the National Banker's Association and the Federal Reserve Bank to disseminate the packets.
  (4) Encourage major national and regional banks to conduct seminars for their lending officers at the state and local levels based on the information in the packets. Reaching the chairman and presidents of companies can be helpful.
  (5) Have bank examiners institute a check off procedure in their audits to determine the number of loans given to people with disabilities and how they are handled.
  (6) Get the commitment of the Federal Reserve Bank and other regulatory entities to educate and regulate the bank industry to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities applying for loans.
• ODEP should promote an amendment to include people with disabilities in the Fair Lending Act.
• Review the Community Reinvestment Act to identify modifications that would enable entrepreneurs with disabilities to participate. Most low income groups can be identified geographically, but that's not true for people with disabilities.

Technical Assistance and Training Group

The entities that could support entrepreneurs with disabilities, including bankers, the SBA, small business development centers (SBDC), vocational rehabilitation (VR) programs, the Social Security Administration (SSA) and micro lenders, do not coordinate their programs or share resources.

• Utilize a community development model to bring together the various stakeholders on state and local levels, either biannually or annually, for education and networking. Possible conveners would be the governor's office, the Office of Disability Employment Policy, or the SBA. The Association for Persons in Supported Employment does something like this every year.
• Develop a national, dynamic, interactive Web site with state by state resource data and Web links to each of those state data resources, as well as national and international links for information sharing and dissemination. The Web site would be used by counselors and others providing services to entrepreneurs. The Office of Disability Employment Policy, the SBA, the RSA or the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities could be involved in developing the site. The site could be supported by the sales of advertising.
• Adapt existing resource materials into alternative formats, and post them on the Web site so people at various levels of state and local programs can download them. Funding could come from a combination of the SBA, RSA, the National Institute on Disability Research and Rehabilitation and the Office of Disability Employment Policy.
• Communication with culturally diverse groups must be done in a culturally sensitive way and language appropriate. It is important to recognize that diverse cultures have differing perceptions of disability and of entrepreneurship.
• State VR programs should provide an annual contract with small business development centers or micro enterprise agencies to provide technical assistance services to start-up businesses and existing businesses owned by people with disabilities.
• Technical assistance and training should be provided through the Internet to remote or under served areas. Although many people with disabilities do not yet own computers, many local library systems now make computers and the Internet available to their patrons.

Self-employment is not viewed as an option for people with disabilities by a large group of players.

• Create a positive image of entrepreneurs with disabilities by publicizing stories of successful entrepreneurs with disabilities through a variety of media, including public service announcements, articles placed in publications such as Reader's Digest, articles placed directly into newspapers throughout the country, articles by syndicated columnists and advertisements placed on billboards or on buses.
• Incorporate information about self-employment or small business ownership for people with disabilities in professional development programs, such as including economic development in the curriculum for vocational rehabilitation counselors.
• A national organization should develop the field of self-employment for people with disabilities. It could be an existing group or a new trade association, or it could be something along the lines of what supported employment people do.
• Establish a central repository for research on entrepreneurship by people with disabilities.

There is a lack of quality long-term follow-up and mentoring for people with disabilities.

• Agencies should contract with SBDCs or micro programs to provide follow-up mentoring using VR case dollars, Supplemental Security Income funds or other work training dollars.
• The SBA should encourage SBDCs to contract with vocational rehabilitation programs for counseling services for individuals with disabilities.

Current measures of success and case closure are inappropriate for entrepreneurs with disabilities.

• Give extra credits or rating incentives to vocational rehabilitation counselors for placing clients into self-employment or small business ownership. For example, if the counselor earns one credit for closing a client's case because the client was hired by an employer, the counselor would earn two or three credits for closing a client as an entrepreneur to recognize that it takes the counselor longer to work with an entrepreneur.
• Establish a time line of at least six months to a year from the time the business becomes profitable before determining if the client's case can be closed.

Concerns about the effect the health of an entrepreneur with a disability on his or her ability to operate a business affect the ability of the entrepreneur to find funding.

• Lenders should require a short-term and long-term contingency plan with specific alternatives for maintaining the business should the owner be unable to do so.
• Individuals providing technical assistance to entrepreneurs with disabilities should assure that a contingency plan is included in all business plans.

Entrepreneurs Group

• People with disabilities fear the loss of medical insurance coverage that could result from work activity. # Access to universal, affordable and comprehensive healthcare coverage that meets the needs of people with disabilities and their dependents should be ensured.
• Give front line service providers, such as vocational rehabilitation counselors, the training necessary to assist recipients of SSI to write PASS plans which set aside money to buy private insurance.
• Establish policy that requires rehabilitation counselors to analyze recipient business plans for the provision of health insurance.
• Establish a pool for insurance coverage for entrepreneurs with disabilities guaranteed by the federal government, as they do now for flood insurance.
• Continue Medicare coverage after business start-ups.
• Develop sliding fee scales for HMO purchase, possibly through SSI or medical reimbursements.
• Propose legislation that prohibits denial of coverage for durable medical equipment for certain diagnoses. # Develop a consumer collaborative for the purchase of HMO coverage at group rates.
• Establish a committee representing health maintenance organizations, the Health Care Financing Administration, the SBA, health insurance companies and consumers with disabilities to establish a mechanism for the purchase of affordable health care for entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Encourage existing in-home support services programs to provide matching funding to pay for attendants for at least three years from the time the person opens his or her business.
• Allow entrepreneurs to buy health insurance through plans offered to federal employees. Adding disabled entrepreneurs to that large group would do the least damage to an experience rated program.

Entrepreneurs with disabilities encounter difficulties entering the marketplace because of social barriers and negative attitudes.

• Develop a public education strategy that promotes the viability of self-employment as an opportunity for people with disabilities.
• Produce and distribute an entrepreneurs resource book for and by people with disabilities.
• Produce videos featuring successful entrepreneurs with disability to be distributed through a broad spectrum of channels, such as cable television and the financial services industries.
• Produce public service announcements about resources that are available for entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Encourage high schools, colleges and universities to offer courses on starting and maintaining a business for people with disabilities.
• The transition requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act should be reviewed for applicability to entrepreneurship.
• Encourage state councils on development disabilities and state vocational rehabilitation agencies to offer grants to provide entrepreneurship training, including assertiveness training to people with disabilities.
• Develop a comprehensive Web site that provides technical assistance and bulletin boards on specific issues and is hot linked to all relevant entities.
• Market entrepreneurship to potential entrepreneurs with disabilities and their service provider networks.
• Build a network of education and support services for people with disabilities, including quality counseling geared toward personal choice decision making.
• Mobilize business associations, financial institutions and disability advocacy organizations to develop public education campaigns on the abilities of disabled entrepreneurs.
• Encourage trade organizations to include people with disabilities, including provision of reasonable accommodation to members with disabilities.

There is a need to develop highly skilled entrepreneurs with disabilities through leadership training and capacity building.

• Use professional small business trade associations, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to encourage specialized trade groups in the relevant industries to mentor businesspeople with disabilities on a peer-to-peer basis to assist them develop business skills.
• Enable vocational rehabilitation counselors and other relevant service providers to have access to knowledgeable experts in the field.
• Educate people with disabilities about self-employment opportunities.
• Mandate that vocational rehabilitation programs offer workshops in small business development and that they provide long distance learning opportunities.
• Help entrepreneurs with disabilities identify training needs and obtain best practice training available in their communities.
• Promote legislation that creates the same opportunities in self-employment for people with disabilities that exist for other minority groups.
• Develop training programs tailored to the needs of people with disabilities.
• Distribute information about SBA loan guarantee programs to vocational rehabilitation counselors and people with disabilities.
• Develop an information bank of resources about business development in alternative formats.
• Encourage vocational rehabilitation programs and small business development centers to connect entrepreneurs with disabilities with financial managers, business consultants, attorneys, etc.

To establish entrepreneurship for people with disabilities as a viable financial alternative, work disincentives inherent in income support programs must be eliminated.

• Create flexible policies for maintaining public income support during small business start-ups.
• Encourage SBDCs to network people with disabilities and disability related associations with vocational rehabilitation counselors because they have resources that would help entrepreneurs.
• Eliminate provisions of programs that penalize entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Create financial incentives such as tax breaks for people with disabilities to become entrepreneurs.
• Eliminate financial disincentives to work for people with disabilities.
• Create tax credits to allow entrepreneurs with disabilities to meet disability-related work expenses. This would level the playing field by removing disability-related expenses, such as reader's and personal assistants, from the business's costs.

Public policies and procedures are not coordinated and often conflict.

• Create a consistent national public policy agenda that supports self-employment for people with disabilities.
• Define persons with disabilities as a socially and economically disadvantaged group with under the SBA 8(a) program.
• Convene a task force of top level federal government agencies to resolve policy conflicts. The Internal Revenue Service, the SBA, the Social Security Administration and the departments of Labor, Education, Transportation and Housing need to collaborate.
• Analyze existing public policies that impact self-employment for people with disabilities and determine how they conflict or compliment each other.
• Determine which policies are counterproductive and eliminate them.
• Eliminate the inconsistencies between policies by having agencies work together.
• Develop a partnership between SBA and RSA to promote entrepreneurship for people with disabilities.
• Create local networks of vocational rehabilitation programs and small business service providers.
• Create low interest loan funds and grant programs to fund business start-ups for people with disabilities.
• Review state level policy and procedures that impact entrepreneurship for people with disabilities for conflicts and disincentives.
• Encourage states to designate lottery money to develop new initiatives for people with disabilities.
• Stimulate discussion about private sector involvement supporting entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Identify and publicize best practices in promoting entrepreneurship for people with disabilities.

Government Programs

People with disabilities, small business service providers and the public do not believe that people with disabilities cannot be successful entrepreneurs.

• Educate persons with disabilities about the viability of self-employment and small business ownership.
• Dispel myths believed by service providers, funders and others regarding the difficulties and costs of self-employment and small business ownership.
• Encourage all government agencies to fully participate in helping people with disabilities to enter self-employment and small business ownership, rather than allowing them to only refer clients to vocational rehabilitation programs.
• Increase the effectiveness of existing small business programs for people with disabilities and hold them accountable for outcomes.
• Develop and encourage a consistent message about the viability of self-employment and small business employment for persons with disabilities and communicate that to all the constituencies.
• Facilitate informed choice for individuals, including the choice of small business employment or self-employment as a vocational goal.
• Identify viable models of self-employment and small business ownership for people with disabilities and disseminate information about them to individuals with disabilities and their service providers.
• Accurately measure and communicate the true participation rate of people with disabilities in the work force, including their participation in self-employment and small business ownership.
• Establish realistic milestones for increasing the number of people with disabilities in self-employment or small business ownership.
• Measure the increase in the gross domestic product created by entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Establish a baseline of information about services for people with disabilities by requesting business development programs, such as the small business development centers and micro enterprise programs, to report the extent of their services and supports for people with disabilities.

People with disabilities face many disincentives to work.

• Establish access to affordable healthcare for entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Allow the Social Security Administration to phase out the Social Security cash benefit as a person's earned income goes up, to provide a slow transition off the rolls.
• Develop legislation that would simplify that process of getting back on the Social Security roles by continuing the extended period of eligibility ad infinitum, so a person with a disability would be returned to payment status when his or her income dropped below a certain level.
• Conduct a major initiative to change the attitude of federal and state agencies about the ability of people with disabilities to successfully be self-employed or own small businesses.
• Ensure that vocational rehabilitation counselors and managers receive accurate information about the success rate of small businesses.
• Secure a commitment to promote small business and self-employment for people with disabilities from top policy makers and administrators, starting with the President. Commitments should be secured from all levels of the service delivery system, including cabinet secretaries and federal and state agency administrators. Included in the commitments should be the availability of necessary and sufficient resources to support entrepreneurs with disabilities.
• Establish a method for rewarding vocational rehabilitation counselors with additional credit for assisting a client to achieve self-employment or small business ownership.
• Develop legislation that would require the use of vocational rehabilitation funds to leverage funds from outside sources.
• Conduct pilot projects to explore the effectiveness of differing approaches to financing entrepreneurs with disabilities, providing incentives to vocational rehabilitation counselors, and encouraging people with disabilities to consider self-employment or small business ownership as a viable career.
• Take advantage of the political support for entrepreneurship to request changes necessary to encourage entrepreneurship by people with disabilities.
• Convene a one day meeting of entrepreneurs with disabilities and disability consumer advocacy organizations to stimulate more ideas about the future direction of policy and program initiatives.
• Ask the President to have at least three dinners a year with corporate leaders to ask, "What are you doing about people with disabilities- Come back in six months and I'll give you another dinner and tell me what you've done. "

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