California State University, Monterey Bay has received a $15,000 grant from Bank of America to support its Small Business Development Center, an innovative program that provides counseling and training to small businesses or people who are trying to start them.

“The Bank of America grant allows the Small Business Development Center to maximize the efforts of the whole team,” said Andrea Nield, the center’s associate director.

“Small Business Development Centers are America’s best-kept secret for businesses. The Bank of America grant will allow us to strengthen our outreach in order to help more aspiring and existing business owners to achieve their goals,” Nield said. The center, which opened in the fall of 2009, is located in a storefront in Gonzales and has other offices in areas that it serves along the Highway 101 corridor from Gilroy to King City. It provides critical services to small business owners, helping them create jobs and solidify the local economy.

The center helps people develop business plans, secure financing, set up bookkeeping systems, improve operations, plan for expansion, project cash flow, determine technology needs and provide a variety of other services helpful to small businesses. In addition to the free one-on-one consulting, the center offers a variety of workshops and seminars.

Working in partnership with community leaders, Bank of America's local market leadership directs its giving through local grants that address pressing social, economic, and cultural needs of communities served by the bank. Over the last decade, the bank has supported CSUMB’s Recruitment in Science Education program, the Service Learning Institute and the Green Job Corps program.

Photo at upper right (left to right): John Houseman, corporation and foundation relations officer at CSUMB; Deirdre Smallwood, senior vice president for the Monterey Bay Market, Bank of America; Andrea Nield, associate director of the Small Business Development Center; Mike Mahan, vice president for University Advancement at CSUMB. Photo by Don Porter