QuickTake:

Sandra Easdale’s job at the Lane Council of Governments sits at the intersection of business and government. Easdale helps businesses, including startups, secure the financing they need to grow and expand. Her work spans Lane County — and beyond, at times. 

Name: Sandra Easdale 

Job title: Loan program manager

Agency: Lane Council of Governments 

Years in agency overall: More than 14 at Lane Council of Governments, including contract work while employed with Oregon Cascades West Council of Governments. 

Years in role: Worked in commercial lending industry for more than 20 years

Sandra Easdale has a simple goal: to help businesses in Lane County succeed and grow the economy. It’s also complicated: She helps businesses navigate through a variety of loan programs to tap into the capital they need to succeed and grow. 

Easdale is a loan program manager for the Lane Council of Governments, an agency that offers services countywide. She primarily works with businesses and startups in Lane County, but is also qualified to help businesses statewide get Small Business Administration loans for real property acquisitions and construction – up to $5 million. 

In Lane County, she helps businesses with loan programs through a variety of initiatives, such as the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration, and a U.S. Department of Agriculture program for rural business development.

The Lane Council of Governments also has a revolving loan fund for smaller deals of $700,000 or less.

The deals can work in partnership with other groups, like the CCD Business Development Corporation in Roseburg. 

Easdale is a resource for businesses that can’t secure all the capital they need directly through banks and credit unions. As a result, the loans are subordinate to any bank debt businesses take on – and work in combination with all the resources needed to get a business growing or started. 

For more information about LCOG and loans, visit https://www.lcog-or.gov/loans.

Here’s a look at Easdale’s work:

Lookout Eugene-Springfield: Tell us about what you do. 

Sandra Easdale: We’re here to foster economic development, to provide access to capital for small business owners for either startups or expansions that can’t obtain traditional financing. We’re commonly known as the gap financier, because we partner with a bank or credit union on most projects. If a borrower is not able to obtain financing directly through their bank or credit union, and has enough injection to cover the requirement, then we come in and partner with that bank or credit union.

Lookout: What do you like about your job?

Easdale: The thing I love about my job is basically working with startups. I enjoy, like I always say, to help the borrowers achieve their goals and their dreams. … I worked with a gentleman that started doing just a mobile car wash. He went around and did detailed mobile car washes, and now he owns at least three brick-and-mortar car washes.

Through the years, I’ve helped him finance three of them, and he calls me on a general basis and says, ‘Hey Sandra, I’m looking at this. What’s your thoughts on that?’ In fact, he’s looking at selling one of his car washes, and he called me or referred that person to me for financing. So building that repetition of and rapport of working with them and knowing that I’m available to assist them not only at the time I’m doing that financing, but with future projects and referrals that they’ll give me on businesses that are looking at financing.

Lookout: What’s the most challenging part of your job?

Easdale: It would be more than likely the startups — trying to really work with them on understanding projections, understanding what’s required from a lender, because of the fact that they really need to be secured (based) on what their competition is, how they’re coming up with the numbers, what they’re going to be truly looking at the first couple years of trying to start a business. 

Lookout: Do you find much of a difference between doing this work for a government agency as opposed to entirely in the private sector?

Easdale: There’s still the same requirements that we have, that the lender, the banks, or the credit unions have. The thing that’s nice is that we have the capability of having a little bit more risk because we offset being in second lien position on a project, but we make sure that they still qualify. We have our regulations. …  The main thing is we’re here for economic development. We are here for job creation. And that is something I feel really proud of and love about working with the government agency because that’s what we want to support. 

Lookout: Is there anything you wish people knew about your job?

Easdale: That we have funds to support businesses who need to keep some capital in their business and not have to use up their savings to obtain financing for their projects.

Lookout: How much lending has the Lane Council of Governments helped businesses secure?

Easdale: Over $100 million since 1971. And we’ve created or retained over 99,600 jobs.

Lookout: What’s an example of that work?

Easdale: We partnered with Umpqua Bank on a chiropractic business located in Springfield. They were buying a new building for their business, and two new jobs were created because of them expanding. 

Lookout: What do you do when you’re not working? 

Easdale: I love traveling to the coast and traveling around Oregon. My husband laughs at me also because I’ll go by and I’ll see real estate signs or businesses signs and I’ll say, “Oh, that building! I wonder.”  There are those types that you know want to come to the area.

Ben Botkin covers politics and policy in Lane County. He has worked as a journalist since 2003, most recently at the Oregon Capital Chronicle, where he covered justice, health and human services and documented regional efforts to combat fentanyl addiction. Botkin has worked in statehouses in Idaho, Nevada, Oklahoma and, of course, Oregon. When he's not working, you'll find him road tripping across the West, hiking or surfing along the Oregon Coast.