Yes, Terri. we have a great group for creatives. It's called Self-Employed Creative Professionals (SECP: http://www.secppdx.com). It's about 10 years old and is comprised of writers, designers, photographers, illustrators, and video and mulitmedia people. We have monthly events that revolve around collaborative networking (we're all natural collaborative partners) and a business growth presentation. PLUS we have some benefits like group health care discounts, vender discoutns and a group of preferred providers. We're expanding our monthly event forum into a Self-Employed Academy where we bring in small business experts to help our members learn to run their businesses better. We've got strategic business planners, CPAs, an IP attorney; marketing and PR experts; financial planners and banks; all with experience with helping self-employed professionals prosper. We're also working on developing multiple income streams so that we can get some financial security and stability. Locally, we've worked with city leaders to try to make things better for us. This involves being involved in refining the City's RFP process so that it's more accessible to us. We've got about 600 local members and before this year, we really didn't tell anyone about us. It was just a 'bring your friend' type of thing. Now, we're really realizing that everyone doesn't have this sort of support network and we're really working at letting other know.

Thanks for asking.
Barbara