Rhode Island’s entrepreneurs have a number of agencies they can turn to for help with planning, budgeting, expansion, personnel and resource management, or business advice.
And that may be a problem, at least according to a number of businesspeople, academics and politicians who gathered for a roundtable discussion last week at Johnson & Wales University’s Larry Friedman International Center for Entrepreneurship.
Among many organizations, businesspeople can choose to get help from the nonprofit Center for Women & Enterprise, the Rhode Island Coalition for Minority Investment, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, the U.S. Small Business Administration and the R.I. Small Business Development Center.
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The problem is that the agencies are not “clearly linked,” said Phyl Speser, co-founder and CEO of Foresight Science & Technology, a business consulting firm based in Providence. And there is no one source directing business owners to the resources they need.
Speser was one of 11 entrepreneurs invited to discuss their issues and concerns with U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy and the SBDC at last Monday’s forum.
“There is organization in small pockets,” he said. “What’s missing is pulling the individual pieces into a coherent framework.”
That is one area John Cronin said he hopes to address as the SBDC’s new executive director. The center moved this summer from Bryant University to Johnson & Wales after Bryant decided it no longer wanted to host the center on its campus, and Cronin said its strategy is to not only offer its own services, but also connect businesses to other agencies that can help them.
“We can’t be everything to everybody,” said Adriana Dawson, a regional director for the SBDC. “But we can help each other identify what the needs are. We can identify key players and become a referral base.”
Cronin said he’s also working with Louis Soares, project manager of the RIEDC’s Every Company Counts program, to build an even stronger referral system for small businesses.
Kennedy said he sees the SBDC as a “hub for activity” when it comes to bridging the state’s small business agencies because for 20 years it has been “the catalyst for all of the federal SBA’s programs.”
Half of the center’s operating funds come from the SBA. The other half come from matching funds from the state and from the center’s host, Johnson & Wales, said Doug Jobling, SBDC regional director and former executive director.
Wendy Hanson, a team-building coach for Corley Hanson Associates, a business consulting firm in Providence, said the small business agencies in the state are “wasting resources” because of the duplication of services and the lack of direction as to who should go where.
Jobling asked Kennedy if he could look at the issue on the federal level, since the federal government funds a number of organizations and requires them to offer similar services in order to receive funding.
“Within the state we need to work with our colleagues in similar organizations to bring some logic to the matrix of services available to companies,” he said.
In the meantime, Kennedy said he is preparing a bill for the next Congressional session, called the GROW America’s Small Businesses Act, to help entrepreneurs.
The measure would allow small businesses with annual revenue less than $12 million to defer up to $275,000 in federal income taxes with no penalties, he said. They could use the money to reinvest in their businesses and would be required to start repaying the taxes (with interest) after two years.
Each business could only use the tax deferment one time, he said. But it could extend the repayment grace period by one year if it increased its work force by 10 percent during the two-year period.
Patricia McLaughlin, senior vice president of institutional advancement at Johnson & Wales, said the school’s College of Business and entrepreneurship center have been discussing Rhode Island’s small business climate with Kennedy’s policy advisers for the past few months.
The point of last week’s event was to open dialogue between entrepreneurs, legislators, the university and the SBDC about the issues entrepreneurs and small business owners face and what can be done to help them, McLaughlin said. It was the first in a series the university plans to organize. The next one will be in about 60 days.
“We’re trying to make the climate for small businesses better in Rhode Island,” she said.
And now that the university has won the bid to host the SBDC on campus, it will be taking its involvement in small business affairs “up a notch,” McLaughlin said. “You’re going to see enhanced involvement.”
