Many more businesses took advantage of the services offered by the state's Small Business Development Centers in what was a trying year for established companies as well. By the time it ended, consultants whose services were paid for by the centers provided approximately 32,900 hours of their time to business owners who didn't have to pay a cent for it.
"That’s a critically important piece of this whole puzzle. It doesn't cost you anything to come to the SDBC, whether you’re a brand new startup or, again, that hundred-year-old existing company that’s looking to overcome a challenge or become more profitable," Minnesota Small Business Development Center Network State Director Bruce Strong said Wednesday, March 17.
Speaking at an online roundtable discussion that afternoon, Strong and other officials characterized the centers as a helpful and stabilizing — if not little-publicized — force, the importance of which was only underscored by the pandemic. The U.S. Small Business Administration, the federal entity overseeing the centers, has until recently forbid them from marketing their services.
Nevertheless, a total of 5,835 entrepreneurs and businesses sought help in one form or another from the nine centers scattered throughout Minnesota last year, roughly 2,000 more than reportedly did so in 2019. Strong attributed the bump to the numerous challenges the coronavirus pandemic posed to business owners.
Nathalie Nkashama said at Wednesday's roundtable that consultants the centers hired on her behalf helped her Worthington, Minn.-based African food store to navigate the application process for obtaining Paycheck Protection Program loans. That program, also overseen by the SBA, launched last year when Congress passed the initial $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill and is credited with sustaining countless businesses that might have otherwise gone under due to the pandemic recession.
"It took a team for me to get here," Nkashama said. "We're a small business and I was new into this world."
Though the small business centers themselves are not lenders, they do help their clients to find sources from which they can borrow. In 2020, officials said Wednesday, they helped small business owners tap $127 million in new capital.
Small businesses will, according to Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development Commissioner Steve Grove, play a role in Minnesota's continuing economic recovery. He said they are being looked at as a "key pillar of growth" for the state in the coming year during Wednesday's roundtable, noting that small businesses employ almost half of Minnesotans.
"These are businesses that line our main streets, they're a part of our everyday lives, and they've also been some of the hardest hit by the pandemic," he said.
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