Beginning July 1, military veterans from all over Georgia and most of South Carolina will have a new place to find help starting, sustaining and growing businesses, the Veterans Business Outreach Center hosted by the Business Innovation Group of Georgia Southern University.
The Business Innovation Group won a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration, or SBA, to launch the outreach center. Georgia Southern is among six organizations, from here to Hawaii, chosen in a $1.5 million round of grants to open new centers.
The center will be one of 19 SBA-funded Veterans Business Outreach Centers in the United States, said Dr. Dominique Halaby, director of the GSU Business Innovation Group. It will be housed in the City Campus building on East Main Street.
“Last year we started working with the SBA to make a case that this state needed its own Veterans Business Outreach Center,” Halaby said. “They were being serviced through the group out of Florida, and although they were doing an admirable job, it just wasn’t enough. We have so many veterans in our community, so many military installations, so many transitioning service members and their families.”
Outreach services to Georgia and South Carolina were previously assigned to a Veterans Business Outreach Center in Panama City, Fla. In addition to all of Georgia, the new Statesboro center’s service map encompasses the southern and western two-thirds of South Carolina, including its largest cities, Columbia and Charleston.
The center will be staffed by its own full-time director, a full-time business consultant, and a graduate student working part-time. These personnel will be hired through the university’s human resources processes, Halaby said in an interview. The $250,000 is for the first year of operation, with a one-year renewal provision.
“If we are successful, if we meet the necessary bench marks, we hope this to be a very long-term relationship with the SBA,” Halaby said.
SBA connection
Georgia Southern has hosted a Small Business Development Center with SBA funding since 1997. But the development center, now also housed at City Campus with the other Business Innovation Group programs, is subcontracted through the one at the University of Georgia. As a regional office, it serves 13 counties.
So the veterans outreach center’s opening marks a new, direct relationship between the SBA and Georgia Southern. It’s also the GSU Business Innovation Group’s first program with a statewide service area, Halaby said.
“The reason that I’m really excited about that is it also feeds to our evolution in the economic development and business development space,” he said, comparing it to programs at UGA and Georgia Tech that serve the entire state.
The word “veteran” is given a wide definition for the outreach centers. Their services are available to active duty military, National Guard and Reserve members, veterans and service-disabled veterans and military spouses.
Services include business concept development and evaluation, for “making sure that you start off with a very sound idea from day one,” as well as entrepreneurial training, counseling and mentorship, said U.S. Small Business Administration District Director Terri L. Denison.
Denison, whose “district,” is the entire state of Georgia, came to Statesboro to help make the announcement Monday.
“We’re truly a state of entrepreneurs and truly a state of veterans, and that combination is what made having a VBOC here make sense,” Denison said.
In fiscal year 2015, almost $73 million in SBA-backed loans were made to Georgia veterans, and about $800 million in federal contracts went to Georgia-based businesses owned by veterans or service-disabled military personnel, she said.
The SBA does not make direct loans, but provides guaranteed loans through commercial lenders. A program called Veterans Advantage reduces or waives the guarantee fees, depending on the loan amount.
A ‘gateway’
For loans, the staff will refer veterans to the Small Business Development Center in the same building, Halaby said. The veterans centers also serve to refer veterans to business services available throughout the community, Denison said.
“It’s a new gateway,” she said. “A lot of people say something like this is a duplication of other things you already have, and my answer to that is that sometimes you have to kind of create a tent for people peek in and see what they can find.”
Dr. David Snow, director of military affairs for the University System of Georgia, also took part in the announcement.
“Georgia’s military population and veteran population are significant,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it’s the fifth-largest active-duty population in the nation. We also have the third-highest number of female veterans in the nation.”
Nationwide, veterans constitute less than 1 percent of the population, but in Georgia, veterans, plus active duty military, National Guard and Reserve personnel make up almost 9 percent of the population, Snow said.
“Many of them are focused to work in industry, get out and maybe go on to higher education, or start their own business, so this is a wonderful opportunity and resource to help those who serve continue to serve, providing businesses and jobs and economic growth throughout the state and the region,” he said.
When told about the new center, Lonnie Ellis, American Legion Dexter Allen Post 90 commander, said the organization is naturally for anything that will help veterans.
“The American Legion supports it 100 percent,” he said. “We need to give our veterans every opportunity to kind of have a leg up to pursue their goals. After all, they did put their lives on hold to defend the freedoms that you and I enjoy, so I think there’s a debt owed to all veterans, and we need to make every effort we can to help them out.”
Herald reporter Al Hackle may be reached at (912) 489-9458.