UNM Anderson Offers Assistance to Small Business Owners

The Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico Small Busi­ness Insti­tute (SBI) at the Ander­son School of Man­age­ment is now accept­ing appli­ca­tions for both the spring and fall 2013 semes­ters. This is the ideal pro­gram for small busi­nesses look­ing for assis­tance in busi­ness projects such as mar­ket­ing, expan­sion, financ­ing or cre­at­ing busi­ness plans.

Small busi­ness own­ers will work with grad­u­ate and under­grad­u­ate stu­dents, guided by fac­ulty mem­bers and men­tored by SCORE con­sul­tants, to receive con­sult­ing exper­tise and an out­side per­spec­tive on how to improve busi­ness prac­tices. The cost to par­tic­i­pate in the SBI assis­tance pro­gram is $500.

“Not only is the fee a rea­son­able price for the amount of time and effort put into the report,” said David Ham­mitt, SBI coor­di­na­tor. “But the stu­dents also have access to sev­eral major busi­ness data­bases that would nor­mally cost busi­ness own­ers thou­sands of dol­lars to use. Busi­nesses are sav­ing money while at the same time receiv­ing the research from the pro­fes­sional con­sult­ing reports.”

Since it was founded in 1978, the SBI has suc­cess­fully helped more than 600 busi­nesses includ­ing startup com­pa­nies, expand­ing busi­nesses, non-profit orga­ni­za­tions and fam­ily busi­nesses. Two recent con­sult­ing projects com­pleted by UNM SBI stu­dents were nom­i­nated for the top three prizes in the national SBI Best Con­sult­ing Report com­pe­ti­tion. The win­ners of the com­pe­ti­tion will be announced at the SBI annual con­fer­ence this Feb­ru­ary in Florida. These pres­ti­gious nom­i­na­tions val­i­date the qual­ity of work done by UNM stu­dents and fac­ulty members.

To par­tic­i­pate in this pro­gram, busi­ness own­ers can sub­mit their appli­ca­tion online or for more infor­ma­tion, visit: Small Busi­ness Insti­tute. Due to high demand, space for the spring semes­ter is lim­ited. The dead­line to be con­sid­ered for the spring semes­ter is Fri­day, Jan. 25.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion about the UNM Small Busi­ness Insti­tute pro­gram assis­tance call (505) 277‑8869.