Business associations

A business association or traders’ group can simply be a loose informal collaboration of willing businesses who want to deal with issues, promote their town or develop a brand or marketing campaign; or it can be a fully constituted organisation with office bearers and a bank account.

Advantages of a business association:

• Simple structure and easy to establish.
• Brings interested parties together.
• Can go beyond businesses to include community groups.
• Creates a collective investment and effort.
• More effective lobby and communication mechanism.
• Suitable for smaller towns.

Potential disadvantages:

• Reliant on volunteering and voluntary membership and contributions.
• If not a constituted organisation, it makes it difficult to secure external funding.
• Doesn’t automatically bring in additional funding like improvement districts.
• Requires strong leadership.

Traders' groups and business associations are a good way to bring interested parties together in a more informal way, particularly in smaller towns where a full blown improvement district might not be viable or desirable. However, sometime the informal business association approach can be developed as a precursor to a BID or other constituted organisation.