December 15, 2022
Crisp Center updates - Fall '22
Fall 2022 has been a busy semester for the Crisp Small Business Resource Center. The Center has seen an expansion of existing programs and the addition of a couple of new programs.
Impact Fall Semester 2022
Businesses assisted: 260
Student consulting hours: 7,320
Grants awarded: $200,000
Other capital raised: $30,000
Workshops offered: 15
Community partners engaged: 18
Affiliate Faculty: 7
Center Staff: 3
What’s new?
The Eastern NC Small Business Resource Fair-
The resource fair will be a conference and tradeshow in May of 2023 that will inform small businesses in eastern NC about resources available to fuel growth. The event will include nationally recognized guest speakers, 40 breakout sessions, and a tradeshow with resource providers. The event is currently sponsored by Thread Capital, Pitt County Economic Development, Southern Bank, NC Idea, Electricities, Greenville-ENC Alliance, and the NC Rural Center. Collin Krenz is coordinating this program in addition to his responsibilities with Accelerate Rural.
Faculty Research Alliance-
Three new affiliate faculty, Kent Alipour, Xi Lin, and Erik Taylor are conducting research on programmatic effectiveness with Dennis Barber and David Mayo. This research is critical to structuring new programs and creating programmatic best practices. Researchers are working on the evaluation of Accelerate Rural and the Pirate Entrepreneurship Challenge. Programmatic research and evaluation will become a core competency of the Crisp Center.
Crisp Center Podcast-
Chip Galusha is developing a new podcast to highlight Crisp programs, students, and businesses. The first season will begin recording in the spring semester.
Check in on existing programs.
Start Teams –
The start teams are multidisciplinary teams made of student graphic designers, video editors, web specialists, entrepreneurial leads, marketing, law, and engineering/design students. These teams work with the most promising startups to provide needed development expertise and, at the same time, gain hands-on experience for the student entrepreneurs on the start team. These faculty-managed teams will work directly on small business projects to add resources to accelerate growth.
The start teams address specific, unmet needs of entrepreneurial development for high-growth startups. Multi-disciplinary, intercollegiate teams fill the early company skills gap to allow startup founders to focus on core competencies, refinement of the MVP, and definition of the value proposition for the customer. The program also exposes students to entrepreneurial career paths and becomes a talent pool in the startup ecosystem in underserved and rural communities.
One of the stated goals of the program is to have unsuccessful grant applicants reapply and win grants. In the fall semester, two of the Start Teams companies won grants with NC Idea. About 30 students have worked with companies through the Start Teams program. A program coordinator has been selected and will start in January 2023. Crisp Center graduate student Savannah Hines has been key to this program’s success in Fall 22; while completing the search for the coordinator, Savannah stepped in to manage student teams, hire students, and coordinate with community businesses.
Accelerate Rural NC-
ARNC continues to host synchronous cohorts under the direction of Dennis Tracz. In Fall of 2022, there was a heavy emphasis on agricultural-based businesses. The NC Rural Center and Got-to-be NC continue to be great advocates and partners in the program. In the 2022 North Carolina Small Business Plan the Rural Center recommended a direct funding appropriation from the NC General Assembly to ARNC.
Asynchronous cohorts began under the leadership of Collin Krenz in Summer 22. Collin is working with Pitt Community College, Beaufort County Community College, Wayne Community College, and Edgecombe Community College on community-based cohorts. 34 students have participated in asynchronous pilot cohorts. In a new partnership with Wayne Community College, Wayne County is running its small business pitch competition through ARNC. To qualify for the pitch competition participants must complete Accelerate Rural.
Executive Farm Management-
EFM is set to begin in Savannah in the second week of January. EFM is a partnership with NCSU, GA Tech, Clemson, and Crisp Center/ECU College of Business to train large family farms to be entrepreneurially minded. This year family business planning has been added as a core topic area led by the Crisp Center. David Mayo will also be speaking to 60+ large farm operations on behalf of the Crisp Center and EFM at the 2023 Southeast Fruit and Vegetable Conference.
Supporting Small Business Center Trainings-
The Crisp Center partnered with two community college Small Business Centers to offer six trainings for community business owners. Savannah Hines and David Mayo presented topic areas of marketing, finance, and business planning through the partnership. In the Spring the center will continue offering courses in existing topic areas and Savannah will offer a new course, Social Media Marketing, in Belhaven, NC.
Student Class Consulting Projects:
Small business consulting continues to be a strength of the Crisp Center. The Faculty Alliance Program added an additional class in the Fall (Economics). Active consulting courses for the Fall semester include Managing the Family Business and Economics. The Center also assisted in several team placements in the marketing department. Unfortunately, the faculty alliance member in HR Management, Sharon Justice, retired in the Spring and Dr. Getto from Technical Writing moved to a different university. The center is seeking two additional faculty alliance members in the Spring semester.
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