By Bob Jacobson
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

Josie Pradella is a founding member of Wisconsin Partners for SustainAbility, the driving force behind the Dane County Buy Local Initiative. The purpose of the initiative is to encourage area residents to shift consumer choices to build community and buy local first, which helps stimulate the local economy and strengthen the community in other ways.

Why should people buy local? Because there are a lot of things that making that choice can do for the community. There are a number of studies that demonstrate that local retailers generate three to five times the income for the community that national chain stores do, and there are various ways that circulates within the community. Local businesses are more involved in their communities. They're rooted in place. They often serve on local nonprofit boards. They hire more local services--their legal services, their accountants, their bankers, that sort of thing. They often create more local jobs. They more often will resource things for their stores or products more locally, so that reduces the unnecessary transportation involved. Local businesses also counter the globalization effect that we're experiencing. They are more personal -- they have a direct connection with their customers, and often people know each other on a first-name basis. So there are all sorts of ways local businesses strengthen the local community.

How widespread is this movement? There are a number of national associations that are attempting to do variations on this. There is something called AMIBA, which is the American Independent Business Alliance. There's an organization called the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, which limits their definition of local business to independents; in other words people who are not part of national chains, and not part of franchises of national chains, so they're very particular in terms of how they define their membership. There are a number of community efforts around the country. One of the best known is in Austin. Another one is in Boulder, Colorado. There's one that we're getting some assistance from, the Conscious Community and Business Network out of Reno, Nevada. We actually had their founder, Richard Flyer, come to Madison for the kickoff of our buy local initiative in September 2004 and February 2005. So we see these initiatives springing up in a lot of different places.

When did this start taking root in Madison? Since early last fall. We generated a steering committee of committed people in the community, and had our first public event September 27. We've been trying to have one community breakfast meeting per month, but we've decided that's a little too intense an activity level, so we're backing off to once every other month.

How did you get involved in the initiative? Through the nonprofit that I was involved in founding, the Wisconsin Partners for SustainAbility. We want to help people take action within their daily lives toward sustainability. I went to Scotland for a week-long conference on globalization and localization, and that really opened my eyes to how important it is for local communities to pay attention to these issues. So when I came back I was proposing to our board that we have a "strengthen local economies" initiative. We were interested in possibly starting a Wisconsin buy local initiative, and we wanted to try to start a pilot somewhere to see what lessons we could learn and what would be replicated among other communities across the state. This is how the Dane County Buy Local Initiative evolved. We started with Madison because so many of us are here, and there's been incredible enthusiasm behind it. It's been mostly business people involved, as well as a little bit of University of Wisconsin help.

What kinds of things should people be buying locally that they probably haven't been thinking about? All kinds of products and services. It's the services people typically forget about. We have a choice of whether we go to Chase Bank or Home Savings. Or a credit union versus a major national bank. We can choose a local accountant as opposed to some big accounting firm that may not be headquartered here. Same thing with the insurance industry. With products, people are doing a lot of Internet ordering right now because it's tax-free. To me that's not the issue. Sure, you can order books through Amazon and Borders and all those chains, but for every dollar you spend with them, three to five times that would be circulated back around your local community if you bought from A Room of One's Own or Rainbow Bookstore, or some of the other local independents.

So how do you convince someone who has limited disposable income that they should buy something at a higher price from a small local retailer rather than go to Wal-Mart where they know they can get it cheaper? It's certainly not that simple. We recognize that we will never shift everybody's behavior, and there are people who are income challenged, or just because they think they are getting better value somewhere else, or for whatever reason, are going to choose to continue shopping as they have. We're not against that. Our philosophy is more about building community and thinking about buying local first when you can. If you shift your purchasing behavior even a few times a week or a month, it can make a difference to benefit the community.

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