Brenda B. Hopper,
NJSBDC State Director

Virginia S. Bauer
NJ Commerce CEO/Secretary

Dear NJSBDC Client:

As the recent damage from Hurricane Katrina tragically illustrates, disaster planning for all entities, large and small, is vitally important to public safety, business continuity and the economy as a whole. Several months ago, the New Jersey Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission released the recommendations of the Small Business Continuity Task Force, to better assist the business community and help reduce the impact of potential disaster situations on business. At that time, the Commission released "A Blueprint for Emergency Preparedness" which covered the general topic of emergency preparedness and provided a comprehensive checklist of information and resources for small business.

This checklist covers a wide variety of issues to better help small business prevent and contend with small and large disasters. It included reference to measures that can be taken by small business in the human resources, physical resources and business continuity planning areas to ensure that the business community is best prepared for these kinds of situations and to prevent business interruptions and potential loss of revenues during any kind of emergency or disaster situations.

We are sending you this important message to let you know that this brochure is currently available at all NJSBDC offices throughout the state and on the Commission’s website (www.newjerseycommerce.org.) We are also pleased to announce that the NJSBDC network has now introduced a new component into its business plan workshops. "Business continuity planning" is being presented in NJSBDC business plan workshops across the state through the NJSBDC network so that you can be better prepared to cope with emergency-disaster situations.

According to the NJ Commerce Commission, estimates indicate that up to 40 percent of small businesses never reopen following a disaster. Therefore, it is imperative that small businesses have emergency management plans in place.

Our goal is to educate and provide the necessary information to the small business sector to ensure you can protect your business against these circumstances and also know what recovery steps to take after a disaster or emergency to remediate financial implications and identify government agencies at the local, state and federal level that provide assistance for emergency planning.

Please refer to the NJSBDC calendar of events at www.njsbdc.com and the New Jersey Commerce, Economic Growth and Tourism Commission's official website at www.newjerseycommerce.org for more information on business continuity and emergency planning.

All eleven regional centers of the NJSBDC network are listed on its website should you want to contact the center closest to you.

As partners in this effort, we hope that you can also spread the word to other business colleagues about these educational tools for business continuity planning.

We look forward to working with you to ensure that you are protected from disasters of any kind so that your business can grow and flourish.

Sincerely,