The Santa Monica College Small Business Development Center (SBDC) has won three coveted awards for 2010, including Best Overall Center Performance award, from the Los Angeles Regional SBDC Network.
“To achieve the recognition of ‘Best Performance’ for 2010 is a great honor, as it recognizes the efforts of the entire center staff,” said SMC SBDC Director Michelle King. “More importantly it reflects how the center has been able to help impact the community as a whole. Information is powerful, and as our clients use the information they have obtained from their experience with SBDC, the true impact will be immeasurable.”
The center also won the Highest Number of New Business Starts award by assisting in the creation of 49 new businesses in the community in 2010, and the Highest Extended Engagement Clients award for service to clients on a sustained basis for more than one year.
Additionally, the college’s SBDC was recognized as the first center in the history of the Los Angeles Regional Network to meet and exceed all of the core goals mandated by the program’s funding source, the Small Business Administration.
The center offered counseling and training services to more than 1,700 entrepreneurs in 2010, and counseled about 800 clients in its service area, which includes Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, Venice, Culver City, Malibu, Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles International Airport region.
Started in 2007, the center offers no-cost, one-on-one business counseling and low-cost training seminars. Topics of seminars include, among other subjects, business plans, corporate formation and business financing.