Dec. 3—CROOKSTON — A recent Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development grant will help fund a program that will benefit small businesses and students in the region.
The University of Minnesota Crookston's Veden Center for Rural Economic Development was awarded a $237,217 Small Business Partnership Grant from DEED, which will fund a program that will provide businesses with education, networking and marketing services at little to no cost.
DEED awarded Small Business Partnership Grants to 37 nonprofit and public organizations, for a total $9.8 million, to support entrepreneurs and small businesses in the state. The grant program is targeted to organizations that provide business development and technical assistance services to entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Mitchell Berg, associate director of the Veden Center, said the program grant money will be used to repurpose services that the Veden Center has offered in the past with a new focus on entrepreneurship and business development in a post-COVID world. The project will consist of five different components: three sets of business certificate courses with focuses on entrepreneurship, QuickBook training and financial resiliency, two years of networking support and an internship program. The program will be open to businesses at all stages — from entrepreneurs with ideas to established small businesses hoping to refine their operations.
The DEED grant will cover all or most of the cost of classes, networking and hiring an intern. As the details of the program are still being developed, Berg says the center is looking for ways to cut even more costs for businesses.
"For instance, with the QuickBooks training, we've got it in the grant that whoever takes the class can receive, up to a certain amount of time, a free QuickBooks membership," said Berg. "The thing we don't want to do with these classes is offer them and then they find out they have to buy a $500 software package."
Providing services like training courses and networking services for free will help small businesses get ahead, said Rachel Lundbohm, assistant professor of management at UMC and a Veden fellow.
"It's helping them to launch and grow their business without having the added expenses that would come along if they had to pay somebody to do that," said Lundbohm.
Businesses are not the only ones that will benefit from the program. Lundbohm says at UMC, most majors require students to complete internships for their degrees. The Veden Center will help pair participating businesses with interns from UMC to assist with tasks like marketing and branding. Interns will be paid for their work through the Veden Center with DEED grant dollars, taking the financial burden of paying interns off the shoulders of small businesses.