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I'm excited to announce WIPP's new partnership with KeyBank's Key4Women program. Key4Women will be partnering with WIPP's Women Accessing Capital program to help women-owned businesses better understand the process of obtaining financing. Together, these programs will seek to inform women about legislation directly impacting their businesses and provide financial education associated with acquiring funding, a combination that aims to support women in business with the resources essential to business growth.

In conjunction with WIPP's goal to make securing capital an easier and more transparent process, Key4Women will host webinars and local seminars on topics such fraud prevention, courage and leadership, SBA loans, venture capital and angel investing, and capital expenditures. Also, WIPP will connect our Instant Impact leaders across the country with Key4Women's programming and vice versa so that members of both organizations can benefit from the resources, information and connections being shared.

Key4Women was founded by Maria Coyne, Executive Vice President of the Business Banking segment at KeyBank. Maria offers financial advice for women in her monthly blog, Maria on Money, and is responsible for KeyBank's SBA program.

So here is the million dollar question: Should the government intervene in order to get better Access to Capital? This topic continues to be a point of discussion for all size of companies. The companies that need the capital and cannot get it complain that money is too tight. The companies that can access capital suggest that things are loosening up.

Maybe the banks are now using better due diligence to offer loans, and the companies that qualify are getting approved. Too many loans were written to companies that should not have gotten a loan, and now they are defaulting.

The people are complaining to their Congressmen and Senators and they are feeling the pressure. If the government steps in to stimulate the economy by encouraging easier access to capital, then aren't we setting ourselves up for further problems? I think we should take this time as a cleansing period. The companies that don't qualify now will get stronger by not being too leveraged.

We already have low interest rates, we have the additional bonus depreciation thru stimulus, isnt this enough? Now it is time to make prudent business decisions and run our businessness without piling on too much debt.