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Marion, Iowa © Tasha Sams
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We encourage you to head over to The Point to discuss these findings with your peers.
Building on our past survey research focused on the impacts of COVID-19 on small businesses, we recently conducted a survey aimed at understanding how business owners are managing the recovery from COVID-19 and responding to recent protests and social unrest related to police violence against Black Americans.
Our survey was open for participation between August 11th and August 25th. We heard from 2,049 respondents and received a total of 1,414 completed surveys from 47 states plus the District of Columbia. 31 percent of respondents came from communities with fewer than 10,000 residents, and 51 percent of respondents operated businesses that were not in a major metropolitan area. 23 percent of respondents represented businesses with a sole owner-operator, 42 percent had between two and five employees, and 95 percent had fewer than 20 employees.
Here are some of our initial findings:
The vast majority of survey respondents have reopened their business or never closed.
About 30 percent of respondent business owners indicated that their businesses never closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 53 percent closed at some point but have since reopened. Approximately seven percent of respondents selected the “other” option, indicating in their “write-in” answers that they’d reopened on a limited basis, whether due to limited demand, limited staffing, regulatory restriction, or simply opening by appointment only. This means less than ten percent of respondents have closed their businesses due to the pandemic and not reopened.
The data from our new survey suggests the impacts on small business closures have not yet been as severe as we projected in a report we released in April. In that analysis, we extrapolated survey data on prospective business closures during the summer and estimated that about 25 percent of the nation’s small businesses were at risk of closure by late September.
It is important to note that in both survey cases, responses were being provided based on the small business owners’ perspectives at that immediate time. With the continuation of the pandemic, there have been many variable introductions that may have effected business owners’ ability to survive. For example, the availability of PPP and EIDL funds, the timing of reopening or level of restrictions, and assistance from local organizations like Main Street programs likely effected these outcomes. As our data suggest today, going forward small business conditions could improve or further erode based on variables such as sales levels from the holiday shopping season or if additional shut downs are needed due to increases in COVID infections. What is known is that without clear data on the subject, it remains difficult to know with much certainty how many small businesses are closing nationally.
Despite hardships, small business owners are focused on not going into further debt to keep their businesses afloat during the crisis.
More than 60 percent of respondent business owners indicated they planned to leverage regular revenues, e-commerce revenues, grants, and/or promotions with gift certificates and memberships, and did not plan to leverage credit card debt, bank loans, new lines of credit, or government loans. About 33 percent of respondent business owners exclusively identified regular revenues, e-commerce revenues, and/or promotions with gift certificates and memberships as means to finance their operations during the crisis.
Small business owners are adapting their business operations to COVID-19 in a variety of ways.
More than half of the respondent business owners have set requirements that staff and customers at their business wear face masks, placed a hand sanitizer station at the entrance of the business, posted information focused on steps their business is taking to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, and limited the number of customers, diners, or clients in their business at any given time. There was greater variation and sometimes less widespread adoption of changes related to minimizing customers’, clients’, or diners’ time spent inside the space, including adoption of curbside pickup, delivery models, or outdoor seating or dining.
Many of the changes seen as most useful have been widely adopted, and changes seen as important but out of reach often have barriers related to cost and physical space.
We asked survey respondents to write in the changes they see as especially successful or useful in making customers and clients feel comfortable in regard to COVID-19. The most common write-in responses to this question highlighted a few of the changes listed in the previous question: use or requirement of mask wearing represented the most common response (mentioned in roughly 33 percent of written-in responses), followed by hand sanitizer/disinfectant wipes (roughly 16 percent), curbside pickup (roughly 9 percent), online business operations (roughly 7 percent), and operations moved outdoors (roughly 5 percent).
Some notable or prototypical responses include the following:
Respondents also listed changes to operations that they wanted to put in place but couldn’t for one reason or another. These include online or e-commerce operations (roughly 10 percent), delivery services and easy pickup of goods (roughly 7 percent), and touch-free payment, hand sanitizer stations, and/or door operation (roughly 5 percent).
Notable or prototypical responses include the following:
More than other nonprofit or government entities, local Main Street programs have offered more consistent and greater levels of support to small business respondents.
Echoing findings from one of our earlier surveys on the impacts of COVID-19, Main Street programs offered respondents high, steady, and increasing levels of support over time throughout the pandemic, with 22 percent reporting support from a local Main Street program prior to COVID-19, 25 percent reporting such support during “stay-at-home” orders, and 26 percent reporting such support at present. Respondent business owners also indicated that Main Street programs had offered greater levels of support than all other types of nonprofit and government entities. 54 percent of respondents said a Main Street program had offered some degree of support throughout the COVID-19 pandemic thus far, and 38 percent said a Main Street program had offered “some support” or “a lot of support.” Government offices and Chambers of Commerce were the next most supportive on both questions. The fact that Main Street programs have been a consistent source of business-related support is particularly notable, given that the needs of small businesses have likely varied widely and shifted over time from a focus on accessing federal support programs to a focus on adapting business operations and business models as the pandemic persisted.
The overall level of hardship implied in responses to these questions also warrants mention. Nearly a third of small business respondents indicated they had “not received assistance from any local organizations or entities” and were facing the crisis without business-related support from nonprofit or governmental entities. It is important to note, however, that businesses may have not received support simply because they didn’t close and didn’t need any support from governmental or nonprofit organizations.
About half of respondent business owners said there had been protests in the area near their business in recent weeks. Respondents reported widely divergent impacts of the protests on business operations and community spirit.
With so much social unrest this summer around the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Jacob Blake, and others, we asked about how small businesses across the country were seeing impacts. Half of the survey respondents said protests had occurred in the area near their business. Among those business owners who reported nearby protests, perceptions of the impact of those protests were split. For instance, while
24 percent reported that the protests had brought the community together and supported a greater sense of community spirit, 20 percent indicated the protests had divided the community. Most respondents who said a protest had occurred near their business reported no impacts from the protest (43 percent).
Finally, we asked business owners if their business had any response to the social unrest and protests. Nearly 20 percent of written-in responses explicitly cited support for the Black Lives Matter movement as a whole or support for the protestors specifically. About 16 percent of written-in responses indicated a preference to remain apolitical and neutral as businesses. About 5 percent cited concerns about safety of employees and security of the business during the protests, and about 4 percent said they kept their business closed during the protests.
A sampling of notable or prototypical responses includes the following:
Explore the Data
We’ve developed a pair of interactive maps where you can explore the data further and see how small businesses in your state and community are grappling with the COVID-19 crisis. In order to protect the confidentiality of individual respondents, we include aggregated data for all states and communities where we had at least five completed surveys. To explore the data, simply click on any community that has a colored dot or any state shaded in blue. The results can be easily copied and pasted into a Word doc or Excel spreadsheet. Please note that the maps may take a few moments to load.
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© Priscilla Du Preez
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Livingston, Montana © Jake McGlothlin
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Raton Adventure Centre in Raton, New Mexico © Brenda Ferri
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The Dalles, Oregon © Alicia Gallo
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A storage container storefront in Jasper, Alabama. © Ryan McGill-Blanton Media Group
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Crema Brew Coffee is a locally-owned coffee shop in New Bern, North Carolina. © Swiss Bear
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New Morning storefront in Biddeford, Maine © Heart of Biddeford
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New Orleans, Louisiana © Bobby Boone
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Cincinnati, Ohio © Janet Hurn
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Charlotte, NC © Pixabay
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Laramie, WY © Laramie Main Street Alliance
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© Allapattah CDC
Get ready to support your small business owners and encourage people to shop small this November!
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© Main Street South Carolina
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© Historic Valley Junction
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© Notice Pictures
Main Street America has a podcast! Tune into Main Street Business Insights to hear from small business leaders across the country.
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Stockbridge, GA © Stockbridge Main Street
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Spencer, IA © Spencer Main Street
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Boston, MA © Kyle Klein
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Franklin, TN © Brandon Jean
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York, PA © Sully Pinos
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Evart, MI © Storyville
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Ottumwa, IA © Main Street Ottumwa
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Wixom, MI © Carissa Serylo
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Oceanside, CA © Road West Photography
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Colville, WA © Colville Together
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Camden, AR © Kimberly Moore Davis
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Silver City, NM © Silver City MainStreet
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Skowhegan, ME © Kristina Cannon
Main Street America is proud to support the Revitalizing Small and Local Businesses Act
Main Street America's research team shares the results of the 2022 Small Business Survey.
© JENNIFER E. WOLF
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Wheeling, WV © Wheeling Heritage
Chief Program Officer Matt Wagner, Ph.D., shares his predictions for the trends affecting small businesses in 2022.
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Charles City, IA © Mark Wicks
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Little Rock, AR © Main Street Arkansas
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Memphis, TN © Four Way
Heart of Biddeford shares the strategies they developed to support Black-owned businesses in their community.
Biddeford, ME © Heart of Biddeford
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Tulsa, OK © Dr. Tiffany Crutcher
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Fremont, CA © Fremont Economic Development
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A vacant storefront is the perfect stage to creatively promote the available space or to showcase other businesses and events in the area.
Ripon, WI © RetailWorks, Inc
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Batavia, IL © April Duda Photography
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Asheville, NC © Ablohkin
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© Cindy Shebley
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Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
Meet a recipient of the HartBeat of Main Street Grant Program
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Meet some amazing women business owners!
Our research team dug into some of the data about the state of Black-owned businesses on Main Street, the structural challenges they face, and how Main Streets can support them.
Matt Wagner explores how the pandemic may affect the shop small holiday weekend.
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Detailed findings from our follow-up survey on the impacts of COVID-19 on small businesses to better understand the continued challenges businesses face as the crisis evolves.
How does psychology impact the recovery of our downtowns after the COVID-19 pandemic?
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Small Business Saturday promo pic from Downtown Goldsboro, North Carolina, showing all the folks who took the pledge support a small business in their community.
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The craft beer industry is playing a key role in the rebirth of Main Streets and neighborhood commercial districts across the county.
Appealing to mobility-challenged shoppers yields benefits beyond the store.
Being the only person in the know can be fun, exhilarating even. Except when you are the one person out of 600+ in a room and you know bad news is coming.
Fritz the dog has made his way into the hearts of the residents of LaBelle, Florida, and helped our Main Street Community find a way to make what we do more noticeable.
Altavista On Track, the local Main Street organization, is working to cultivate and sustain local entrepreneurs with an educational business launch competition, Pop-Up Altavista 2.0.
In Winchester, Virginia, one woman’s vision and commitment to downtown’s revitalization created an innovative community space for the Creative Class.
A business retention and expansion plan, properly implemented, not only helps keep businesses open but possibly even helps them expand.
The first rule of conducting business is “make it simple.” The easier it is to pay for merchandise, get entertainment or obtain a service, the more likely it is that people will take advantage of those options.
Main Street communities across the country are no stranger to seeking creative strategies to solve their most nagging issues – vacant buildings, marketing downtown, bolstering retail to name a few.
To understand the role that immigrant business owners play in Boston’s small business ecosystem, you need only to walk through any Boston Main Streets district.
Façade appearance is a critical aspect of the overall aesthetic appeal and unique character of downtown.
A lot of signs are necessary to make a downtown work well, but not every community knows what a good sign system looks like, or how instrumental it can be to the creation of a successful downtown.
Main Street Iowa, a program of the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Iowa Downtown Resource Center, created a one-of-a-kind three-year program to provide help for performance venues located in Main Street districts.
