Supporting Small Businesses

Cal State Fullerton’s Mihaylo College of Business and Economics has been awarded more than $4.2 million in state and federal funding in support of the Small Business Administration regional small-business development network for Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Mihaylo College is responsible for the administration of the centers in Fullerton, Santa Ana and Riverside. Since 2003, the college has been providing training, consulting and technical assistance to network businesses with less than 500 employees.

The funding was secured by Dmitry Khanin, assistant professor of management, and Priscilla Lopez, director of the Regional Lead Small Business Development Center Network, and includes:

• $2.2 million U.S. Small Business Administration contract to continue to oversee the SBA’s regional small-business development network
• nearly $1.1 million from the State of California Business Department of Transportation and Housing
• $957,228 provided under a provision of the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. The act provides grants to small-business development centers across the country to support job creation and retention within the small-business community by providing in-depth business consulting and advice to entrepreneurs and small-business owners. The grants are not meant to replace core funding or matching funds that the SBDCs require to sustain the program.

The job act funds are used to carry out related activities, including partnering with a technology incubator to increase commercialization of technology; hiring of a consultant to work on small-business innovation research and small-business technology transfer proposals with new clients; collaborating more closely with the state’s centers for international trade development and U.S. export assistance centers; and opening a new satellite location in north Orange County.

The lead and regional centers provide consulting, training, business plan and financial statement reviews, technical and international trade assistance, as well as access to capital — “vital functions to help businesses survive and thrive, particularly at this time,” noted Lopez, director of the Regional Lead Small Business Development Center Network.

“Helping them gain access to capital is important during these times,” she added. “The more that we can help them, the better prepared our clients are when they meet with a lender.

“Our overall effort is to be part of a small-business team — to help our clients at the beginning and the middle of the process to start a business and to grow in size, rather than at the end when, perhaps, they are struggling because they didn’t have assistance before,” said Lopez.

The Lead Small Business Development Center is headquartered in Mihaylo Hall on the Cal State Fullerton campus. Assistance services are provided at the following locations:

• TriTech SBDC - Orange County, 2 Park Plaza, Suite 100, Irvine, 92614 (949-794-7229)
• TriTech SBDC - Riverside, 14745 Riverside Dr., Riverside, 92518 (951-571-6480)
• Orange County SBDC, 2323 N. Broadway, Suite 201, Santa Ana, 92706 (714-564-5200)
• Inland Empire SBDC, 1201 Research Park Dr., Suite 100, Riverside, 92507 (951-781-2345)

Additional information is available online.

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Media Contact:

Pamela McLaren, Public Affairs, 657-278-4852 or pmclaren@fullerton.edu