Working in partnership with Florida’s Great Northwest and the Florida Small Business Development Center Network, the Northwest Florida Business Information Clearinghouse (BIC) is a free web portal that provides critical business information to support the startup and growth of small businesses.  The Northwest Florida BIC was brought to the region in order to stimulate economic development in the 16-county (Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Holmes, Washington, Bay, Jackson, Calhoun, Liberty, Gulf, Franklin, Gadsden, Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson) region.  The BIC is a collection of business-related articles, videos, local resources, demographics and tools that help entrepreneurs successfully start and run a business.

Special features of the BIC include:

• Articles on the most pressing issues for small businesses:  Money, Markets, Management and Technology
• Bilingual content in English and Spanish
• Online training videos for self-paced learning
• Demographics data to understand potential markets
• Tools, templates, podcasts and blogs
• Dynamic search of 300 top business web sites
• Online connection to local and national resources, organizations and associations

The Northwest Florida BIC has been tailored to include specific information relevant to the Northwest Florida Region.  A partner site, the National Hispanic BIC (www.hispanicbic.org), has been customized to reach the Hispanic community, and is currently being tailored to target small and minority-owned businesses across the country and around the world.

The National Business Information Clearinghouse is a non-profit organization that is committed to creating wealth in communities by providing key information on topics critical to the success of small business: Money, Markets, Management and Technology. The BIC supports the startup and growth of small and minority-owned businesses by enabling access to timely business information, online training and best practices, resulting in a more vibrant business community.

Development of the BIC was funded by a generous grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. It has also been supported by Our World, Our Family, Western Union’s $50 million, five-year initiative to empower communities around the world.

For more information regarding the BIC, please contact:
Sue A. Evans
Northwest Florida Business Information Clearinghouse
401 East Chase Street, Suite 100
Pensacola, FL  32504
sevans@natbic.org
(850)375-0338