2 min read August 2022 — Sandra Marin Ruiz, regional director of the Florida SBDC at FAU, and assistant vice president for innovation and business development spoke with Invest: about the SBDC’s role in local economic development and social impact, plans to expand on data capabilities and ways the organization approaches diversity. “If you look at a group of consultants, we represent the communities we serve,” she said. “It’s not just demographics; it’s languages, origins and cultural approach.”
What has been keeping you busy?
We are the Small Business Development Centers, a program funded 60 years ago by the Small Business Administration (SBA), as a national network. With a team of certified business consultants, we support small-business growth and development. With all of this infrastructure, we are an anchor program of the FAU Innovation and Business Development and have altogether elevated our mission in four frameworks: regional development, innovation and entrepreneurship, global partnerships and industry engagement, and social innovation. Through these lenses, we are supporting our partners with business attraction, retention and growth. When we are looking at business attraction, we have two different programmatic approaches. One is helping our local residents to start more businesses aligned with new market trends and industries moving into the region. We are supporting the creation of more tech startups, the fintech industry and core entrepreneurial ventures that service more of the traditional industries located here. Also with business attraction, we are working with international organizations, helping them start businesses in the United States. Florida has been attractive for many reasons; one is the close location to Central America, the Caribbean and Latin America and for the connection we have with their SBDC networks. A lot of businesses coming to the United States tend to locate in South Florida and our SBDC at FAU is a friendly resource to start navigating the business journey in the U.S. We work with local governments helping us to explain what their cities offer, and with grassroots organizations on the pre-venture training. One example is the partnership with the College of Business at FAU. Together, it supported a cohort of 17 companies from the Chile SBDC “soft landing” due to our regional collaborative network of partners for business attraction.
We collect data of all kinds, on the success of businesses and how they grow, and we quantify multiple indicators related to job creation and increasing sales. We also collect data related to demographics, as we want to identify trends that guide the addition of new services at the pace those trends change. We collect data in terms of industry, capital access, government contracts and exports, and all of this is translated into economic impact. We use this methodology statewide and in the last five years, the report has shown that for every dollar that we receive from public funding, we return $60 back to the economy related to the impact of jobs. There are also multiple related factors, such as how it impacts real estate, individual consumption and credit card utilization. We use research methods that acclimate expenses and other factors so that every time we create a job or bring more money into the economy, we see how it is translated into the rest of the area. We are in the process of measuring social impact. Our recently added social innovation framework will be measured by a grassroots program serving underserved communities with the support of philanthropic giving, especially from banks. The social impact is how those communities improve their quality of life due to our services. One benefit of being part of the Division of Research is our opportunities to implement social innovation programs in which we promote the use of technology to solve community-based problems, such as smart cities initiatives and smart connected communities.
There are many organizations with similar missions to us, and none of us can serve our community alone. I am so grateful to be part of this community that allows us to partner with different organizations aligned to our mission quite often. One example of this is working closely with chambers of commerce. We sponsor events, put on programs for members, organize events together and market together.
What would you identify as services in the highest demand?
Capital access. It has multiple lenses depending on the stage of the venture or company. Capital access changes names from government contracts and increases the number of clients, to export assistance. If we’re talking about more technology-based initiatives, capital access turns into venture capital and other investment methods for entrepreneurs. For others, it’s getting working capital to start a business, community-based grants to start launching a business on the community side. Capital might also be human capital, which is one of the most pressing needs in the area in terms of workforce. We facilitate access to resources, and everyone needs different resources based on the stage of their business. Everything is strategized by the individual situation.
What is the relationship between the SBDC and FAU?
SBDCs are a part of a national network funded by the Small Business Administration. This is a grant-funded program that the SBA provides mostly to universities that turn into host institutions. Thus, there is a main grantee in each state. For us, the headquarters is the University of West Florida. Out of nine regions in the state, Florida Atlantic University hosts the regional center that serves Broward and Palm Beach counties. The FAU Division of Research integrated the SBDC as the anchor program for innovation, economic, and business development. The university utilizes SBDC as a community-facing program to serve its communities. Out of the 11 locations in the region, we utilize nine from FAU campuses to have consultants and we have other locations to spread our capacity. FAU funds the consultants and provides administrative support. In return, we have special services for the academic community, from faculty and students to industry and global relations. This is a great partnership fostered many years ago and today, we work in an efficient capacity serving innovators, entrepreneurs, businesses and the region as a whole.
What are some of the ways you prioritize diversity in services?
We have two diversity focuses. From one lens, you see that there is an increase in minority-owned businesses because we are attracting more from abroad. But also, the demographics in our clientele are rapidly changing. One of the massive changes we see is the increment in the number of female-owned businesses. We have also seen different changes in the industry, with a higher percentage of women in the technology and factory arenas and more minorities getting into technology-based industries. It’s a move we haven’t explained with data analysis yet, but we are seeing it in our databases and the demographics of consulting requests. On another lens, looking at our group of consultants, we represent the communities we serve. We have consultants who provide business consulting in multiple languages, and we recently hired someone who is a native speaker of Portuguese and we are able to increase our export assistance with Brazil as a target market. Although doing business in the US requires English proficiency, helping somebody in their own language makes the difference and is such an important connection to build. It’s not just demographics; it’s languages, origins and cultural approach. That is part of the metrics we use to design social impact indicators. It’s great to match Florida’s mix of cultures with a mix of professionals and programs. We appreciate the opportunities to use different lenses in our operations. It facilitates us to adapt and evolve in response to the positive changes in our regional economy.
For more information, visit:
