May 10, 2022
'22 Crisp Center Update
Spring has been an exciting semester for the Crisp Center. Companies that the Center has assisted continue to show growth and success.
- Businesses assisted: 364
- Student consulting hours: approximately 4500
- Grants applied (project total): $4.8 million
- Workshops offered: 10
Breaking the numbers down…
- This semester the Crisp Center helped about 100 large family farms though the Executive Farm Management Program, speaking at the Southeast Fruit and Vegetable conference, and the NC Farm Bureau. The farms assisted represent some of the largest value agriculture producers in the Southeast.
- In partnership with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the Crisp Center hosted human resource training webinars that helped regional manufacturers hire, onboard, and retain talent. Workshops were also hosted with the Center for Sustainability on energy efficiency and pollution prevention. In total the workshops were attended by about 140 professionals.
- Workshops were offered in partnership with the community college Small Business Centers from Beaufort County Community College and Pitt Community College in business startup, business planning, finance, and marketing. About 75 startups participated in these trainings.
- A 10-week cohort of Accelerate Rural, 8 Start Teams, and 9 class projects provided a great depth of assistance to 42 regional companies.
Start Teams Grant-
In November, the Crisp Small Business Resource Center was awarded its third grant from NC IDEA to build student teams to assist high-growth startups. The grant was awarded to the Crisp Center with the Entrepreneurship Program at Campbell University as a sub awardee.
The Start Teams Program began recruitment in January and received 57 applications for students. Eight students from both Campbell and ECU were hired to assist high-growth companies in rural eastern and sandhills NC. Companies included food businesses, new product companies, medical devices, and a marketing firm. Students formed teams of 3-5 to tackle pressing challenges at the businesses.
During the Spring, a $200,000 grant was submitted to USDA to extend the Start Teams program through July 23 and hire a full-time program coordinator. Regardless of the grant outcome, the program will continue in the fall with assistance to more rural companies.
Small Business Navigator Program-
Crisp’s Small Business Navigator, John Tyler Turlington-Bonds, will graduate this semester with a BSBA-Management. In Jon Tyler’s two semesters as the navigator, he fielded inquiries from the small business resource portal, selected 12 student teams for national and international pitch competitions, and worked to update a resource list and the Pitt County’s VINES website.
Pollution Prevention and Source Reduction Grant
The ECU Center for Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering and the Crisp Center were awarded a $50,000 EPA grant to help manufacturers reduce waste and pollution in the automotive and food industries. The Center for Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering will be assisting with waste and energy audits with six manufacturing companies, and the Crisp Center will conduct cost-benefit analysis on recommendations. The grant will fund three additional workshops for manufacturers this summer in Pitt, Beaufort, and Wayne counties.
Support for NC Food Commercialization Center
The Crisp Center is one of two representing board seats on behalf of ECU for the Eastern North Carolina Food Commercialization Center (ENCFCC). The ENCFCC will become a focal point to enable new food-based businesses in the region. The facility received a $4M appropriation from the NC General Assembly and is pursuing matching funds from EDA for construction. During the Spring, the Crisp Center and ENCFCC partnered for a $2 million grant from the USDA to support food cluster development in eastern North Carolina. If funded, the grant will support special cohorts for Accelerate Rural and Start Teams as well as expand training and consulting for food-related businesses. Once the ENCFCC opens, it will fund production training for food manufacturing employees across the east. David Mayo will serve as Principal Investigator, Corey Pulido as Co-Principal Investigator, and Dr. Michael Harris as Co-Investigator.
Accelerate Rural NC (ARNC)
The virtual synchronous cohorts of the accelerator have helped around 150 businesses in rural counties throughout the state. Existing grant funds will continue to support the program through October 2022; however, a regional partner has expressed interest in multi-year financial support. Other grant applications are also in place that will continue ARNC funding through 2022. The program continues to have strong statewide support from NC Idea, the NC Rural Center, and the USDA.
The ARNC has hired a new expansion coordinator to build partnerships and expand the reach of an asynchronous program. Colin Krenz joins the team from working with the RISE 29 program; Colin’s experience with RISE29 has allowed him to begin scaling the program quickly. Over the summer, he will continue to build partnerships and run test cohorts.
Executive Farm Management (EFM)
EFM was a great success this Spring. The Crisp Center joined NCSU, Clemson, and GA Tech to provide training to large family farms. Affiliate faculty member Sharon Justice trained farmers on human resource topic areas while Director David Mayo conducted training in family business, business modeling, and finance. The 3- week intensive training course concluded in Savannah, Georgia, with a shark tank presentation that highlighted key learnings from previous sessions.
Economic Developer Training-
The Crisp Center hosted 12 economic developers for training on how to integrate small business and entrepreneurship into their economic development strategy. This training has a great impact on local policy in economic development.
Mayo Named to North Carolina’s Small Business Advisory Council
Crisp Center Director David Mayo was named to North Carolina’s Small Business Advisory Council which works to inform policymakers in the general assembly on legislative impacts on small businesses.
Cultivating Entrepreneurship
The Cultivating Entrepreneurship program will work with the North Carolina League of Municipalities (NCLM) to develop small business incentive packages for rural towns. A university center grant was submitted to EDA for $1M with an additional $1M of matching funds. If funded the grant will support faculty assistance to towns for strategic planning, needs identification, promotional creation, and incentive development, and support businesses through student projects and continued support. The program will match small businesses with the best site locations. Miller School faculty member Dr. Dennis Barber and Julie Metz from the NCLM have been working on this project for since 2020; winning the grant will financially support growing the program. Dr. Barber will serve as Co-Principal Investigator and David Mayo as the Principal Investigator.
- Categories:
- Miller School of Entrepreneurship