Farm Commons

The Business Law Commons is a community of small business owners who support each other in achieving their risk management goals. It is a place where peace of mind flourishes and one’s values are reflected every day in the small mechanics of running a business- the leases, contracts, and regulatory compliance that allow for sustained operations. The business law commons achieves this by deeply empowering its members to understand and take action on their concerns, resolving them in a way that is consistent with their individual and cultural values.

The business law commons starts with a wide array of practical, plain language resources on legal issues that give business owners practical decision-making tools. The commons supports business owners through the next step: implementing their decision. Reducing risk often involves uncomfortable conversations, such as discussions with business partners about death, challenging the landlord about the garbage service, and calling yet another insurance agent… it’s hard. Through communication skills training, we lower barriers to these important conversations. Peer-to-peer brainstorming and guided personal reflection help business owners discover the practical solutions that make risk management possible- here, now.

As a result, small business owners gain true power, together. Dialogue fosters creativity, consensus, and mutual self-enforcement in a community. Consensus and self-enforcement of norms are powerful legal tools. Judges, legislators, and attorneys look to them when making rulings, issuing regulations, and writing new laws. When community or industry norms are acknowledged in a courtroom, they achieve the power of law.

BIPOC and women-owned businesses are less resilient than their white-owned peers. A McKinsey study published in 2021 showed Black-owned businesses cite their risk of distress at 30 percentage points above white-owned enterprises, with a majority reporting being very or extremely concerned about their viability. Risk exposure is backed up by a higher failure rate for BIPOC and women-owned businesses. The loss of a small business isn’t the only fatality- the self-confidence, autonomy, and sense of belonging lost are deeply felt.

The status quo expects that small businesses manage their risk by working with a professional team, including an attorney, accountant, and insurance professional. The status quo isn’t working. The same McKinsey study found that only 58% of BIPOC owners sought professional services, for reasons including expense, inaccessibility and mistrust, compared to 70% of white business owners.

Attorneys hold an essential role in risk management as they provide the targeted information that identifies the most significant risks for an industry and can draft the solutions necessary. Attorneys are conduits to successful integration of accountants and insurance products. Yet, a 2018 Forbes article outlines deep dissatisfaction with attorneys, from the high cost to the poor service and lack of basic understanding of their enterprises.

The stakes are high. 8 out of 10 BIPOC-owned businesses fail in the first 18 months. If we want to build the resiliency of BIPOC and women-owned businesses, we must make sure they have access to risk management tools that resolve the lack of trust, accessibility, and affordability.

The Inspire Awards honor innovative solutions that transform women and BIPOC-owned businesses in the United States into resilient operations, able to surmount the challenges. Specifically, the Inspire Awards seek to address the higher rate of business failure and lack of expertise in functional skills of business ownership, among other issues including lack of access to essential services. The Business Law Commons addresses these issues, exactly. Our project serves creates a solution to a problem largely experienced by women and BIPOC-owned businesses: trust, affordability, and accessibility barriers to traditional business law services. Our solution is transformative because it focuses on all three of those barriers- not just the affordability of legal services. We begin with practical, relevant education, then expanding to supportive services that help the entrepreneur create their own solutions and live into their values through contracts and regulatory compliance. Leadership development empowers small business owners to provide the same support to their peers. In doing so, we don’t just create more resilient women and BIPOC-owned businesses; we fundamentally transform the relationship between business owners and business law. No longer are women and BIPOC owners on the receiving end of someone else’s expertise and advice- they are the creators of it.  A healthy ecosystem of business law includes expert attorneys who carefully build understanding and support effective risk management, transforming the attorney’s role into steward of an entrepreneur who knows her options and has the power to integrate her values into all areas of risk management.

The business law commons serves small business owners who have historically lacked access to traditional legal services: BIPOC and women-owned businesses. Our model attracts new Americans and LGBTQ+ individuals as well.

Although every small business owner stands to benefit from the effective risk reduction and stronger solutions generation our model offers, those with access to the status quo are less attracted to alternatives. As evidence, our audience is currently 74% female-identified, whereas just 40% of small businesses are owned by women in the first 10 years of operation. Our audience spans nationwide geography and the educational and age spectrum; entrepreneurs earn an average of $40,000 in income from their business, annually. 

Small businesses are more resilient as a result. Eighty-eight percent of the owners we reach plan to make at least 3 crucial changes to their operation. Most importantly, intention turns to action. Fully 70% of the owners who intend to improve their resilience succeed within 3 months. Of the business owners we elevate as leaders, 87% request to continue investing in their legal leadership capabilities with us.

Our model does not replace an attorney- it places the attorney in the appropriate position while empowering the business owner to be more effective in that relationship. We are proud to say that fully 65% of the owners we reach say they are more likely to use an attorney. Their confidence and ability to walk into an attorney’s office knowing what they want and how to be effective in getting it soars.

We currently work with farmers in every state. This project is to expand our work outside of agriculture to small businesses as a whole.

Our organization’s mission is to sustain small businesses, particularly farm operations, by making them more resilient in the face of change. This project expands our scope beyond farms to small businesses to other industries with strong woman and BIPOC ownership.

Specifically, our mission is, "Farm Commons empowers communities to resolve their own business law vulnerabilities, within an ecosystem of support."

Small businesses owned by BIPOC and women entrepreneurs fail at higher rates than their white and male owned counterparts. This problem occurs in part because BIPOC and women owned businesses are experiencing greater risk and vulnerability. Risk management technical support would alleviate these issues. Access to legal risk management as especially vital since it is a conduit to appropriate accounting techniques and insurance products.

BIPOC and women owned businesses are not getting the legal risk management they need because business law attorneys are seen as ineffective and expensive. Also, women and BIPOC entrepreneurs lack the trust and access necessary to utilize business law attorneys. The best way to provide trusted information and support is to do it within the community itself- not to bring it in from the outside. Beginning with education, leading to support, and developing community leadership creates an ecosystem where folks can address their legal risks consistent with their community value. As a result, we can restore the resilience of women and BIPOC owned businesses.

The pandemic significantly disrupted operations. It is most relevant to say we have historically served 300 businesses annually, with projected increases to 500 in one year and 3000 in 5 years.

This project is an initiative of the nonprofit organization, Farm Commons. Farm Commons has for the past decade served small, sustainable farms nationwide, particularly women-owned enterprises in the first 10 years of operation. We have experienced incredible success improving the resilience of this community, and this initiative is to expand our success to a broader community of small business owners that have historically been excluded from traditional business legal services. We anticipate beginning with child care providers (women owners) and construction services companies (BIPOC owners).  This community has a an incredible range of stakeholders from lenders, to vendors, to customers, and associated business service providers like accountants and insurance agents.

Our premise is that those most affected by business law vulnerabilities are also the ones in the best position to lead the solutions. The entire structure of the commons is based around empowering small business owners themselves to create the solutions they need to their own vulnerabilities. We did not create a pro bono attorney-driven legal services or a student-run clinic because no matter how hard such models try, they are not grounded in the community or in place-based solutions.

Our model can be unintuitive. We have been born and raised to believe that turning to an attorney first is the best possible path to legal resilience. People doubt the wisdom or effectiveness of our model. At worst, people fear it is irresponsible to put legal knowledge an solutions generation directly in the hands of the people. The evidence shows these fears are unfounded.

This solution creates trust because the solution is crafted, created, and delivered by the community itself. First, we need to teach the legal basics and we do that by integrate the stories of business owners themselves into the curriculum itself, reflecting the lived experience and wisdom of business owners around business law through the co-presenter model. From the alumni of our workshops and curriculum, we identify those potential leaders who show promise in teaching their peers. We move these folks through a 2-stage leadership development program. When they graduate, they create additional curriculum elements, lead peer support groups, and lead educational programming in their own community. We intentionally foster a diverse group of leaders so that all are reflected in our leaders. We are providing “affinity” programming that allows women, Latino/a, Black, and Indigenous owners to connect with each other around issues specific to their demographic.

Impact goal for next year: Launch the Business Law Commons outside the agricultural sector/industry.

We will achieve this goal by working with a national small business association to facilitate access to the commons as a benefit of membership in that association and/or its affiliates. We will focus on business-to-business service, as it’s impractical to reach business owners ourselves. We anticipate launching with an association that serves child care providers or cleaning services, as these businesses are dominated by owners who have lacked access to traditional legal services.

Impact goal for next 5 years: Expand the Business Law Commons to 10 additional industries with strong BIPOC and women ownership, as well as non-industry specific stakeholders that reach these audiences.

We will achieve this goal by working with the Small Business Development Centers nationwide to reach their communities. We will also cultivate relationships with industry/sector associations to identify those with the highest adoption potential.

Our founder and Executive Director, Rachel Armstrong, has received two prestigious national awards that honor innovative social entrepreneurship with significant capacity for broad-based impact: an Echoing Green Global Fellowship in 2012 and an Ashoka Fellowship in 2018. The Echoing Green Fellowship allowed the organization to get established and create a framework for success. The Ashoka Fellowship powered our expansion to agricultural communities nationwide. Now, we are ready to expand to other industry sectors.

The majority of our leadership team has at least 4 years of experience deeply living into our organization’s mission. We have collectively steered the ship through the dangerous waters of a global pandemic. We have had successes and failures together. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Our collective vision is incredibly strong and continues to grow. We welcome our newer leadership peers who bring fresh perspective in law and agriculture, with a common dedication to witnessing a new relationship between business owners and business law.

Our leadership team has an amazing vision. We’ve proven our model works. We’ve made a big impact in the agricultural industry and reached farmers nationwide. Now, it’s time to expand to other industries and to steward more communities underserved by the status quo towards business resilience. When I first read about the Truist Foundation Inspire Award, I was shocked, especially when I read a bulleted example specifically identifying business law as a barrier to success for women and BIPOC-owned businesses. The business law industry itself has been plodding to recognize that we have a severe access issue and customer service problem. It was a joy to read that the Inspire Award folks had this issue on their radar. I feel we are a perfect fit for the program’s objectives.

I am also thrilled at the opportunity to access support and creative brainstorming around our challenges. Although our staff leadership team has, to a person, lived experience as small business owners as women and BIPOC individuals in agriculture, we don’t embody business expertise. We would benefit significantly from support on technological issues, accessing capital, and reaching our target audiences. We especially love creative brainstorming that allows us to bring our wisdom to the table with others who have complementary expertise. It would be a joy to connect with the Truist Foundation Inspire Award community.

N/A

We need help identifying a technology development strategy that is scalable and that brings the right expertise to bear at the right cost. “In-house development or external?”, for example. We need assistance identifying how capital funds might be useful to us, and where we might turn to access such resources.  As an entity that has never taken on debt before, we could use support in considering our options and the risks. We need assistance with identifying the best business partners for our rollout as we do not have as extensive of networks in the general small business community. We also need advice on an overall go-to-market strategy within our identified target market for our initial expansion into construction/environmental services contractors and child care providers.

We need help identifying a technology development strategy that is scaleable and that brings the right expertise to bear at the right cost. “In house development or external?”, for example. We need assistance identifying how capital funds might be useful to us, and where we might turn to access such resources.  As an entity that has never taken on debt before, we could use support in considering our options and the risks. We need assistance with identifying the best business partners for our rollout as we do not have as extensive of networks in the general small business community. We also need advice on an overall go-to-market strategy within our identified target market for our initial expansion into construction/environmental services contractors and child care providers.