Think Local First is a membership organization of over 500 businesses helping each other adopt innovative, sound business practices through business mentoring and buying from each other. To enable this, Think Local First provides or facilitate such things as a business incubator, marketing assistance, access to loans or a business land trust to enable affordable space for locally-owned businesses downtown, buy local campaigns, and other services to facilitate strong locally-owned business.

Our community has an abundance of healthy businesses, farms, and coops that are owned locally and that contribute to the well-being of our community. Every person and every business knows that their purchasing decisions directly impact the strength of the community they live in. It is easy to find information about local ownership, community-orientation, and sustainability of businesses. The majority of community members, along with government and organizations, actively use this information to make wise choices about their purchasing.

Because of the strong importance attached to supporting locally-owned businesses in the community, a growing percentage of buildings downtown are owned by business owners themselves, or by local landlords working in cooperation with their tenants to strengthen downtown locally-owned businesses. Public policies do not disadvantage locally-owned businesses, and Washtenaw County’s economic development strategies actively encourage local ownership of businesses and sustainability-oriented businesses.