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31 March, 2020
TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS
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  • CARES Act to Offer Assistance to U.S. Small Businesses  |  READ
  • Resource Collection to Help Navigate the COVID-19 Crisis  |  READ
  • Diver Survey Can Help You Engage with Your Diving Customers   |  READ
  • On-Demand Webinar: 911 for You and Your Small Business  |  READ
  • Share Home Schooling Resources  |  READ 
  • Member-to-Member Ideas During Tough Times  |  READ
  • Diving Community Champion Nominee Spotlight: Patriot Scuba  |  READ
CARES Act
The programs and initiatives in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act that was just passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by the President are intended to assist U.S. business owners with whatever needs they have right now. Many U.S. diving businesses could be eligible and you should review this material to help determine your businesses' eligibility.

When implemented, there will be many new resources available for U.S. small businesses, as well as certain non-profits and other employers.  This guide provides information about the major programs and initiatives that will soon be available from the Small Business Administration (SBA) to address these needs, as well as some additional tax provisions that are outside the scope of SBA.

DEMA encourages every U.S. diving business to review  The Small Business Owners Guide to the CARES Act and apply for these resources.
COVID-19 Resources
With the uncertainty surrounding the spread of COVID-19, it is critical for dive retailers and all small dive businesses to stay in front of their customers and to utilize all the resources available to them. 
 
New Shareable Image Available
New shareable image available!
Click here to download & share today.
Click through to find a collection of resources compiled for you by DEMA.

Resources include:
  • COVID-19 Updates 
  • HR, Business, and Marketing Resources
  • Free Shareable Images to Use During COVID-19
  • Member-to-Member Ideas During Tough Times
  • And much more
Diver Survey
DEMA has launched its most recent Diver Online Survey with the goal of updating demographics and psychographics of divers everywhere. DEMA is asking all professionals in the industry to help by requesting that their U.S. and international customers participate. 
 
This is a great opportunity to keep your diving clientele engaged when "social distancing" may be keeping them out of the water. Help us obtain responses by sharing the following link with your customers: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/DEMADiverSurvey2019
Join Tom Shay of Profits Plus for this 60-minute on-demand webinar targeted for small businesses. Tom will provide ideas, strategies and thoughts to help retailers and other small organizations during these difficult times. 
If you have educational images, posters, presentations, videos, etc. that teach children about diving, diving with family, ocean life, biology or sciences related to diving, or other related topics, consider sharing them with DEMA. We will add them to our list and share with our online communities to help parents and others who are looking for educational resources for their children. To share, please click through and submit your resources.
Member-to-Member Ideas
We'd love to be able to share your positive advice, best practices, and experiences with other Members of the industry to help us get through this together. Share with us what you are doing to help your business succeed during this crisis so we can share with others.
DCCDiving Community Champion Nominee Spotlight: Patriot Scuba
DEMA's Diving Community Champion Award recognizes DEMA Member companies using diving to benefit their communities and the public. Here we'd like to recognize and feature one of the nominees from the 2019 award season. Thank you for your contribution to our industry!



Patriot Scuba

With nearly 18 billion pounds of plastic entering the ocean each year, the staff at Patriot Scuba always has an eye out for ways to improve our environment, especially our waterways.  Located on the Occoquan River, a tributary to the Potomac, we are reminded daily about the trash that finds its way into our water.  Whether it is blowing down the driveway or washing into our parking lot heading toward the river or floating by, already in the river, we are constantly reminded of the damage trash can do.  To help, we routinely clean up the trash in our lot to prevent it from entering the river and perform several river dives a year to clean out the trash that has already found its way into the Occoquan.   With these ongoing projects, it only seemed natural for us to look for other ways to prevent more plastics from polluting our waterways.  By chance, one of our owners, Merial, read about the Trex Bags to Benches program that her neighborhood was participating in and decided that Patriot Scuba could team up with Trex for a program in their town. Patriot Scuba is located in the small Historic Town of Occoquan which is home to about 1,000 people and over 50 businesses.  One of the longest standing issues in town is the lack of places to sit and relax along the sidewalks and town dock in the Historic District. Bags to benches seemed like a natural solution to the seating problem.  The program was presented to Dessie Larson, our Project Aware Coordinator, she loved the idea and ran with it. Dessie signed us up with Trex and picked a 6 month period during which we had to collect 500 pound of stretchy film in order for Trex to donate a bench to us.  We could then keep the bench or donate it to any organization of our choosing.  With huge community support, we reached our goal in less than 4 months and asked a fellow diver who also owns a shop in Occoquan to sign up for the program and report the plastic that came in after we reached our goal until our next 6 month period came around as Trex will only donate 1 bench to an organization in 6 months.  To date, we have collected over 1257 pounds of stretchy film plastic like the kinds found in shopping bags and single use water bottles.  We are well on our way to our 3rd bench and will keep going until we run out of space for benches.  The community has embraced this project and we have new people coming in daily to drop off their plastic.  It takes approximately 49,500 grocery store bags to make 500 pounds.  End to end, that is just shy of 10 miles of plastic that will not be entering our oceans for every 500 pounds we collect! 
- Nomination submitted by Merial Currer, Patriot Scuba 
NEW MEMBER SPOTLIGHTS
Check out some of our newest DEMA Members! 

Learn about their business, how you can connect with them, what their business is doing to shape the future of the industry, how they got involved in the industry, and much more!
DEMA INITIATIVES
COVID-19 Resources
To help with the challenges resulting from the spread of COVID-19, DEMA has compiled a collection of resources available to all industry membersFrom updates from the WHO and CDC to HR, business and marketing resources, click through to find information and resources that can help your business during these difficult times.  LEARN MORE
Free Advertising & Marketing Support
DEMA's Go Dive Now Advertising Campaign and Marketing Toolkit makes it easy and inexpensive for you to reach and acquire new customers. Log in to access your resources!  LEARN MORE
Connect with DEMA & the Diving Industry