Businesses are essential to the economy of the City. When businesses thrive and revenue grows it enables the city to invest more in public safety, streets, other infrastructure, programs and services that in turn support a healthy economy that helps business thrive. The Office of Finance seeks to support our businesses by doing all we can to make it easy as possible for you to succeed by focusing as little time as possible in doing business with us --and to spend more time focusing on your own business.
Currently we have over 500,000 businesses registered with our Office. During this past renewal season we asked all of our businesses who renew online to identify themselves if they were a woman owned business or woman sole proprietor and 84,000 responded “yes I am”! We are seeking this type of information to gather better data on who our customers are and to be able to tailor our communications and resources to different sectors, such as Women Business Owners specifically.
On November 12, 2019 we sent out our first electronic newsletter providing information and links to resources for women business owners. We hope that the resources provided will assist our business owners in engaging with our City programs and support business growth. One great resource is the LA Business Portal. The Business Portal is an all in one resource to learn what you don’t know about starting up and growing your business. The site provides access to programs, resources and tools from various City Departments as well as other entities that are involved in the startup and growth of businesses. Be sure to visit the portal at business.lacity.org.
Growth is vital to businesses. The City is working to assist women business owners and others in growing by providing opportunities for them to engage and learn. On November 12th, the Getty House Foundation hosted a Women’s Leadership/Engage LA event which focused on Women and City Contracting. Over 300 attendees heard from a panel of successful women business owners who were also city contractors and engaged with various City departments to learn how they too could do business with the city by securing a contracting opportunity. The City invests billions of dollars in supplies, equipment, construction and professional services and wants to increase participation in contracting by women business owners. Get started today by registering with the Office of Finance, the LA Business Assistance Virtual Network (LABAVN) and LA Vendor Self Service (LAVSS) portals. All of which can be accessed through the LA Business Portal.
Staying connected is also vitally important. If you haven’t already, and you’re an LA based business, please add your women owned status and email contact to our database when you renew you tax registration this year in January 2020. In this way we can keep you apprised of new opportunities to expand your business. Visit Business.lacity.org and open our Business Portal events calendar to see when opportunities for workshops, seminars and vendor fairs are happening!