Gavilan College’s loss of a small business grant may be an
opportunity for area business leaders to develop a plan that makes
more sense and provides more assistance
On the face of it, news that Gavilan Community College is losing its contract to administer the Small Business Development Center for south Santa Clara and San Benito counties is distressing.
Because the University of California, Merced, which awards the contracts for the federal government in this region, decided to drop Gavilan over accounting practice issues, Gavilan will lose an $80,000 federal grant and a matching grant of $140,000 from the state.
Perhaps there’s a silver lining to this bad news. Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Martin, Hollister and San Benito County officials should view this as an opportunity to review the small business development needs in their communities and determine how well the Gavilan SBDC program met them.
While geographically, Gavilan might make sense to administer the region’s SBDC because it serves as the community college for the same region, perhaps the program is not a good fit for other reasons.
It’s questionable whether there’s a natural connection between the skills needed to operate a two-year community college and meet the needs of the population it serves and the skills needed to operate a SBDC and meet the needs of the population it serves.
In addition, we’re not sure it makes sense to have a regional SBDC located in Gilroy. We’d be curious to know how well the Gavilan SBDC served members of other communities.
In all likelihood, the needs of small-business owners (and potential small-business owners) might be very different from community to community. After all, the process of opening a business is different in Hollister and Gilroy, different in unincorporated Santa Clara County and unincorporated San Benito County. Perhaps it would be best to separate the communities into individual SBDCs.
Now that UC Merced has decided to find a new administrator, the business community – chambers of commerce, downtown associations, economic development corporations and the like – should come together to evaluate what they need from a SBDC and to make recommendations on the best way to achieve it.
Clearly, the SBDC in our area is going through a rough patch. Let’s take this opportunity to revamp the SBDC so that it best serves the needs of small-business owners on a regional basis.
