New SBDC eyes spring opening

NEXT PHASE: Previous Rhode Island Small Business Development Center Director Adriana Dawson with interim Director Jim Petell. The center is seeking a new executive director. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
NEXT PHASE: Previous Rhode Island Small Business Development Center Director Adriana Dawson with interim Director Jim Petell. The center is seeking a new executive director. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

A job posted on the University of Rhode Island website pays $57,000 to $122,000 and among the functions is “to work with key stakeholders in the political, governmental, business and academic communities to support the needs of new and existing small businesses.”
Finding that pivotal person – the executive director of the Rhode Island Small Business Development Center – is the defining element for kicking the new, restructured center into motion.
The SBDC has been in transition since Johnson & Wales University ended its eight-year stewardship of the center at the end of 2013 and the University of Rhode Island, awarded the host position by the U.S. Small Business Administration, officially took over on Jan. 2.
The restructuring is going to take some time.
“We want to be open by spring,” said SBDC interim state Director Jim Petell, who is URI’s associate vice president for intellectual property and economic development.
Right now, the wheels are turning on preparations that require state approval for job descriptions and job postings and on discussions regarding potential locations for regional SBDC offices.
Meanwhile, small businesses that were in the course of receiving SBDC assistance on a wide range of business-development issues, from marketing to finances, have been referred to partner agencies – the Rhode Island District Office of the SBA, SCORE and the Center for Women & Enterprise.
Those referrals are in addition to the assistance the Center for Women & Enterprise regularly provides to entrepreneurs.
The transitional process has been that clients who call the SDBC phone number – that’s been about 75 since Jan. 2, said Petell – get a return phone call from former SBDC state Director Adriana Dawson, who has been working part time as a consultant during the transition.
Depending upon their level of business development and expertise required, the entrepreneurs are referred to one of the partner agencies. As the SBDC contract ended at Johnson & Wales, the former staff referred new clients and existing ones to available resources, said Dawson.
“We closed out 2013 by having met 500 clients for that calendar year,” said Dawson.
In 2012, the SBDC counseled 700 clients, with 70 percent of those existing businesses and 30 percent startups, Dawson previously told Providence Business News.
The Providence office of the SBA, which also fields calls for SCORE, has received close to the 75 calls that have been fielded by the transitional SBDC since the beginning of the year, said SBA Rhode Island District Director Mark Hayward.
“I don’t think any of those calls are falling through the cracks,” said Hayward.
The state SBA office has to approve URI’s development of the SBDC, said Hayward.
Originally, URI was awarded $574,000 in federal funding, which requires matching funds. That amount was increased to $631,000, based on the congressional appropriations for the small-business development centers, said Hayward.
A major piece of the restructured SBDC that URI still has to get in place is to negotiate sub-agreements for colocating partner offices, said Hayward.
The previous arrangement through Johnson & Wales created four SBDC regional offices: a Providence metro office located at SBDC headquarters on the JWU campus, a second hub at the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce in Lincoln, a third office at the Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce in Warwick and a fourth hub on the campus of Salve Regina University.
Petell said tentative plans for the URI SBDC network include an office on the URI South Kingstown campus, a Providence office at the R.I. Commerce Corporation and an office on the campus of Bryant University. •

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