Residence: Copperas Cove, Texas

Organization:Central Texas College, Killeen, Texas

Occupation: Professor of Business Management and Sam Walton Fellow of Free Enterprise

First job:My first job was dusting furniture in my family’s retail furniture store. I started work there and ended my last day in free enterprise at Ledger Furniture some 45 years ago.

Philosophy:Family First. Help for those less fortunate, and love for brothers and sisters.

Favorite Music:Country and Western especially "Waltz Across Texas” by Ernest Tubbs

Favorite TV show or movie:"Giant”

Favorite book:The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

What got me interested in my work: My parents were both teachers, and they loved that profession. Both went into private business, but both still loved their previous occupation. While operating our family business, I had an opportunity to become an adjunct instructor at Central Texas College. I got hooked and moved here after my family sold our business. As long as I can hold chalk or operate PowerPoint, I will teach others about the benefits of private enterprise.

Greatest accomplishment:Marrying the most wonderful woman in the world, Linda Ledger, my bride of 45 years and my girlfriend of 50 years.

Success is...seeing someone that you have helped succeed.

Pet Peeve:Lack of dedication to education by our youth.

Favorite Quote: "When you are going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill.

Current Projects:Enjoying six grandchildren, working with Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) and NACCE, being with our three sons, whom I worship, and catching up on my fishing. I am 10 years and 11 months behind on fishing.

 

 

North Iowa Area Community College, Mason City, IA

E4D®, the affectionate acronym for North Iowa Area Community College’s (NIACC) Entrepreneur for a Day™ educational program presented to elementary students, marks one of the key steps for the next generation of entrepreneurs and for encouraging lifelong learners. Coordinated by the NIACC John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center (NIACC JPEC) in Mason City, IA, E4D® uses unique and exciting curriculum to educate fifth graders on entrepreneurism.

"As a nationally recognized leader in entrepreneurship education, the NIACC JPEC has created an unparalleled opportunity in the E4D® program for children in North Iowa as well as the entire state,” Dr. Deb Derr, NIACC president, said.

Creating a Link

Last May NIACC’s E4D® completed its third year of working with students in the nine-county NIACC region. E4D®, a brainchild developed by the NIACC JPEC, was inspired after visiting Springfield Technical Community College, in Springfield, MA, and observing their Entrepreneur for a Day program. E4D® is also based on the concepts from Play-Doh Economics from the Council of Economic Education. The program was spurred by research that revealed 25 percent of kindergarten students have entrepreneurship characteristics as compared to three percent of high school students (Lobler, 2006). It became apparent that a program designed for elementary students was critical.

According to Kantor, Saboe, and Walsh (2002) seven out of 10 high school students are interested in becoming an entrepreneur, yet 86 percent believe they have little or no knowledge of what it takes. These students have an interest, but no one works to stimulate and encourage them. The students who want to learn more will eventually decide they no longer want to become entrepreneurs, which becomes a loss for their community.

Schools need to foster children’s interests when they are very young. When these interests are not nurtured they will be lost. Both the student and the community will suffer.

One reason why rural communities are declining in population is due to the migration of youth to larger areas as they search for opportunities. Young adults are leaving their small towns because they do not believe the opportunities are there. They do not believe they have the skills to create new jobs for others in their community so they leave to find opportunities.

"We see this program as a game changer for many of these young students,” Tim Putnam, NIACC JPEC associate director, said. "Most of these students have never had any exposure to what it is like to be your own boss or start a business. This program allows them to get hands-on experience on being an entrepreneur and knowing they have another career option to consider.

Program Beginnings

Concern about the development of future entrepreneurs in the North Iowa region was a moving force behind the creation of the E4D® program. Many entrepreneurial programs and academies are available for the high school and college students, but research indicates that a link is needed between elementary and high school.

With a desire to create a cultural transformation, it was determined that fifth grade would be an opportune time to plant the seeds of entrepreneurism. Fifth graders are a social group by nature as they are beginning to come into their own. However, they are not preconditioned and are still open to new ideas and innovation.

NIACC JPEC designed a two-session format that provides flexibility so teachers can incorporate the program into their curriculum with ease. During the program, participants experience business planning, financial literacy, marketing concepts, work place concepts, social responsibility and team-building skills. The first session begins with a visit to the classroom by a trained facilitator. The facilitator introduces terms and concepts of entrepreneurship.

The second session includes a day-long field trip to NIACC. This visit focuses on a group exercise where students experience the full range of entrepreneurial activities. Students choose a product, borrow money from a bank, purchase resources to make the product, manufacture the product, then sell the product and determine if they made a profit. The visit concludes with a tour of NIACC, which offers students a sense of campus life and validates college. Many of these students may be the first generation in their families to attend college, and the campus presence enables the students to make a post secondary connection.

E4D® Well-received

Fourteen school districts and over 1,200 fifth-grade students in North Iowa participated in the E4D® program this past school year. E4D® has been well-received by elementary teachers and administrators. It is considered a valuable component in the teaching curriculum.

"Teachers value this program because they share in the ownership,” Kelley Crane, E4D® coordinator at NIACC, said. "We invite participating instructors to a summer workshop where we ask for input regarding the curriculum. Each year we have added rigor to the program, which has kept it fresh.” The program also matches up with state education standards and requirements, and many schools cite E4D® as their only career-building curriculum.

Riceville Community Schools has participated in the E4D® program for two years. Ellen Grady-Mans, a veteran elementary teacher, has experienced the positive impact E4D® provides students, families and communities. "Having someone other than teachers and parents lead the program validates what their parents and teachers say. After participating in the program, students become more aware of local entrepreneurs, and this may influence their families to support these individuals and businesses and help keep their communities alive,” said Grady-Mans.

Clear Lake Elementary Schools have participated in the E4D® program since 2008. Clear Lake teacher Mary Trezona believes the program is an investment in the future. "I feel that introducing fifth graders to the fundamental principles of entrepreneurship and how to start a business plants seeds of knowledge at an early age that may help their future endeavors blossom into successful businesses,” Trezona said.

Future Expansion

What began as a brainchild at the NIACC JPEC is now a flexible, effective program that can be interjected into classrooms across the entire state. E4D® can help provide the seeds for the next crop of entrepreneurs in Iowa.

"We couldn’t be more pleased that the E4D® program is gaining wings and is being considered by more communities and counties across the state,” Jamie T. Zanios, NIACC vice president of JPEC and Institutional Advancement, said. "We have had interest from outside the state as well, which can help secure the future of the program in tight economic times. Most importantly, young people are being given the opportunity to dream and learn how they can turn a passion into a career or business. Regardless of whether they all become entrepreneurs or not, they will be better employees and citizens as a result of this endeavor.”

If you are interested in learning more about E4D®, contact Crane at 641-422-4234 or cranekel@niacc.edu, or visit http://www.niacc.edu/pappajohn/e4d.html.

References

Saboe, L., Kantor, J., & Walsh, J. (2002). Cultivating Entrepreneurship. Educational Leadership, 59, 80-82.

Lobler, H. (2006, February). Learning entrepreneurship from a constructivist perspective. Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, 18(1), 19-38. Retrieved October 4, 2007, from HillSearch.

Niels Brock Business College, Copenhagen, Denmark

Amidst a global financial crisesthere is a greater need for an entrepreneurial mindset than ever; we need innovative entrepreneurs who can imagine and work a way out of the crisis. The challenge is great, and the risk-willingness must correlate with the challenges that young entrepreneurs are currently facing. At the I-House we do not pretend that these challenges do not exist. Instead we welcome the challenges and are convinced that the future needs can be met by today’s youth. The I-House is based on the firm belief that a social learning environment can stimulate and enhance the competencies of the future entrepreneurs. We work under the premise that learning takes place in a social community that consists of knowledge, experience, values and commitment.

We thus ensure that the networks permeate the I-House by letting lecturers acquire new teaching skills such as coaching techniques etc. The lecturer becomes much more than lecturer, and today many members of faculty find the term "learning facilitator” much more appropriate when describing their many activities.

The I-House’s mission was to create the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. After a year and a half we have had the opportunity to allow ourselves to assess what was done and what has happened. It is tempting to lean back and smile as the list of successes is long. We have created a learning environment based on four basic principles. Future entrepreneurs should engage in:

• an environment that ensures that they are based in a social environment that ensures the possibility of having
• successes, furthermore they need
• role models; the combination of these three provide them with
• self-insight.

How have we ensured that this actually takes place?

Business Live–Letting Reality In

The students are frequently exposed to role models by introducing them to both local and internationally acclaimed entrepreneurs. Business Live is a weekly activity where a local entrepreneur visits the I-House and shares his/her experiences and challenges with the students.

What does it mean to expose the students to role models? Business Live is a recurring activity and it allows students to build a network while studying. Apart from each session providing the students with unique insights into the challenges of entrepreneurship, it also allows the I-House to create and maintain a valuable network for staff and students. The spin-off is that staff members are able to form relations and gain access to live entrepreneurial cases. Furthermore, the entrepreneurs report that they learn a lot from meeting our young students, who ask questions that are thought provoking, relevant, stimulating and insightful.

Globalization and Future Challenges

When the I-House was conceptualized, globalization impacted Denmark in many ways; we were and are rapidly becoming an old population, with a labor shortage and an economy that had to change and become a knowledge economy. Our welfare state was and is still seriously challenged; we need new solutions to serious challenges.

Our young entrepreneurs are able to provide us with those solutions and we are currently in awe of two young entrepreneurs who have designed a training device for patients recovering from e.g. seizures. It is innovative and offers unique solutions to previously active people who are now struggling to regain mobility and independence. The Incubator is able to provide the entrepreneurs with contacts that can aid them in their progress by introducing them to members of our network. This has enabled the business to become established as an EU-supported research project, and it is a perfect example of private-public research partnership.

Young Danish entrepreneurs have to contribute to the Danish welfare state by offering new innovative services that add much needed value to our flexicurity1 system. However, the welfare state is not only facing tough challenges when it comes to labor shortage and a growing population in need of welfare services. Sustainability is on everybody’s lips these days and Copenhagen hosting COP15 (see http://en.cop15.dk/) is an imminent example of the proactive approach to environmental challenges. Our students also contribute to these innovative solutions.

They are taught ethics through action learning. The staff run frequent interviews with the students to ensure that values and ethics permeate the business ideas. Students’ businesses are sustainable or altered to become and incorporate sustainability while in the incubator.

Outside In–Inside Out

The I-House has thus successfully created a learning community, and the students are beginning to report that the programs entailing creativity, innovation, finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, logistics etc. provide them with much valued theoretical insights and stimulating discussions with knowledgeable learning facilitators. The pivotal moment was when the I-House remained true to its origin and let the students and entrepreneurs create and co-produce the programs and happenings in the I-House.

After members of the I-House traveled to Iceland to study how entrepreneurs deal with the crisis, we were reminded that co-producing is the new way forward. This supported our experiences of including students in our projects and the I-House invited students to conceptualize and organize a summer camp for young potential entrepreneurs.

The summer school was among trendsetting activities for the Danish youth population and the first summer camp developed and organized by students themselves. The participants loved it and the feedback was outstandingly positive.

Co-producing creates the foundation for success and when the students experience success, they become more courageous. Thus some students openly express that being an I-House student has set them to the path of becoming an entrepreneur!

Success begets success and with success comes new self-insight.

What is new and what the I-House attempts to implement into our daily practice is that the concept of success has changed. Success is and continues to be based on different values and it is embedded in a new paradigm. It is the paradigm of sustainability and it impacts your business model and your business strategies. Globalization has impacted the market structure and market principles. The exponential growth of technology and mass communication means that the future generations have been raised in a hybrid of choices, easy access to knowledge and the impression that everything is possible. The result is an expectation of influence, meaningful dialogue, transparency and authenticity. Demands facing future entrepreneur and the I-House!

For further information please contact Pernille Berg at pbe@brock.dk. Also visit www.brock.dk,, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT_TO6SYhD0, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONne-XvNRs8&feature=channel_page.

 

Palo Alto Software

Call it a journey:I’ve been teaching entrepreneurship for 11 years now. I started in 1998 when the Internet was engulfing the whole topic in eyeballs fever. As a tech-and-gadget lover and a software entrepreneur, I’ve seen the tipping point and beyond on topics like email and blog posts and business plan software. Early on, I used to have to insist that my students figure out email. These days, I have students following me, and me them, on Facebook and Twitter.

Based on my experience in teaching entrepreneurship and my background as a techie, I’d like to recommend three ways to leverage the power of the Internet in your entrepreneurship class:

1. Incorporate blog posts into your curriculum

Take what’s available online these days on blogs, and compare that to teaching with textbooks. For example, visit http://myventurepad.com. That site consolidates a few dozen of the best business bloggers (disclosure: I’m one of them) in a way that’s easy to use. I’ve worked with a number of great textbooks through the years, but how can a textbook compete with the constantly renewing resource of good business bloggers? This is entrepreneurship. The landscape changes too quickly. Not to mention the fact that blogs are generally free, while textbooks cost your students $100 or more.

The two most obvious drawbacks are relatively easy to solve:

• First, you can solve the problem of quality control–after all, who’s a blogger these days, and what credentials do they have–by reading posts yourself. Many established writers are blogging as part of their marketing. I suggest you use Google’s blog reader (free) and sign up for the list of small business and entrepreneurship bloggers at http://reader.google.com.
• Second, things change so quickly. Blog posts get old. So join Twitter and follow the leaders. It’s free, you don’t have to proactively do anything but follow. And how to find the leaders? Well Business Week published a list of its top 20 entrepreneurs to follow in early September (disclosure, I’m on that list, as @timberry on Twitter). The Web site link is http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/08/0821_twitter_for_entrepreneurs/1.htm. 

Also, I’ve gathered my own collection of entrepreneurship blog posts, broken into categories, which is free to you at http://course.bplans.com. That includes a lot of posts I’ve written (sorry, can’t help it) plus posts by the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, John Jantsch, and other thought leaders.

And, a final thought: Why not reward your students for finding blog posts relevant to weekly topics or class sessions? That’s a double win.

2. Organize assignments with PDFs

For me, the hardest part of teaching is collecting, managing, and grading assignments. Call that CMGA. My students do a business plan as the main deliverable of the course, and I divide key components of the plan into six assignments they have to turn in before the final plan. Most of those are components of the business plan.

After years of working with annoying CMGA problems I’ve finally settled on requiring all assignments be turned in via email as PDF attachments. That PDF is a standard electronic document format that can be attached to an email and then opened and read and printed and saved as a file on a computer. It doesn’t require any application software to open and read, just a PDF reader, of which there are many, and many of those are free. The brains behind PDF is Adobe, and Adobe distributes free PDF readers.

I also make the students responsible. I tell them during the first class that I require email literacy. My online syllabus (that’s the one at course.bplans.com) includes online instructions for Windows and Mac users, plus links to free downloadable software for the Windows users (Mac users have it built into their operating system, and I include instructions for that). They’re responsible for backing up, making correct PDF documents, and getting things properly attached. I remind them in the first class that this is about entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurs don’t have the luxury of submitting either something or a reason why not; they have to submit the something.

The result is that I have no lost assignments–my email saves them–and no more discussion about whether it was turned in, or when. And my grading process, although still annoying, is easier to organize and manage. I use a software tool, PDFAnnotator, to annotate documents, write comments and suggest corrections, keep them as PDF documents, and retain them on my computer, where I’m less likely to lose them than I would be if they were pieces of paper. PDFAnnotator isn’t free. It has competitors, but I’m not sure there is a free software package for this. Still, it was a one-time purchase that was worth it for me. And you have alternatives. You can still print the PDFs, mark them up, and hand them back to students as paper. In my case, I save the marked up PDF documents and send them back as email attachments.

3. Start a Blog and Join Twitter

Blogs are free and relatively easy to do. You can start your own blog for free at wordpress.com or blogger.com. Instructions are readily available online. And, once you have a blog, you can use it to leave comments for your students, collect additional material for them using online links. In essence, you have an online bulletin board for your course.

As an alternative to a blog, Twitter is also free. It allows you to send messages of no more than 140 characters to people who are also signed up and choose to receive your messages. Don’t use it for inane clutter about what you had for breakfast. Set up a class name in Twitter and ask your students to join Twitter and follow that class name, and then you can use it for quick instant updates, like links to blog posts or online videos relevant to course materials, or notes about class guests, and so on.

Conclusion

Get started. If you aren’t familiar with blogs or Twitter or Adobe Acrobat formats (PDF documents) now, you can be tomorrow. And you and your students will be better off.

And for more on this, links, blog posts, suggested assignments, notes on PDF format, my online class curriculum is free for professors, at course.bplans.com.

Tim Berry blogs at http://timberry.bplans.com.

Dakota County Technical College, Rosemount, MN

In the midstof a bleak economic outlook, facile tips and theories regarding how to survive the downturn and make things better aren’t enough. Entrepreneurs need examples of successful ideas turned into action to gain the confidence necessary in the current business climate.

A great example of this demand for action comes from Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s book Start-up Nation, an insightful and thought-provoking look at the entrepreneurial model found in Israeli culture.

In the first chapter, the authors describe Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi’s participation at the Forum for Young Leaders, where he was challenged to find a way to make the world a "better place” by 2030. His idea was to make one country completely oil-independent, thereby inspiring a domino effect of oil-independent nations across the globe.

Words into Action

When current Israeli president Shimon Peres heard Agassi’s idea, he called Agassi to offer support and to ask an important question that perhaps we all need to ask when we consider ideas and suggestions: "Nice speech, but what are you going to do?”

After being encouraged by Peres to pursue his idea, Agassi took action, becoming founder and CEO of Better Place in January 2008. The company quickly became the world’s leading electric vehicle service provider and through a partnership with Renault, is working to develop exchangeable batteries, as well as the infrastructure and operations to support electric vehicles.

The company’s work has such appeal that Agassi initially raised $200 million for the project, followed by an additional $135 million in 2009, garnering massive attention and support around the globe.

While Agassi’s story is one example of the kind of words-into-action approach we need, we have even more examples of inspired entrepreneurship close to home. One such example of local entrepreneurial success is Noelia Urzua Garcia and Minneapolis-based La Loma Tamales.

Noelia left her village of Quebrantadero in the Mexican state of Morelos 16 years ago to move to Minnesota. After working in the Twin Cities food service industry for a few years, Noelia decided to flex her entrepreneurial muscles and, with her husband, Enrique Garcia Salazar, founded the La Loma Coffee Shop in Minneapolis.

Renting kitchen space by the hour, the couple watched as the tamales that Noelia’s mother had taught her to make as a young girl emerged as the cornerstone of La Loma. The modest coffee shop evolved into Cafeteria La Loma and now sells as many as 2,500 tamales a day.

Noelia and Enrique have gone on to found La Loma Mexican Restaurants in Minneapolis and in St. Paul, a catering business, and a wholesale tamale business that serves more than 260 stores in Minnesota and is on track to expand its sales nationwide. La Loma has 35 employees, many longstanding; annual sales top $2.5 million.

When asked for the ingredients to her entrepreneurial success, Noelia credits thoroughly researched business plans and treating her employees like treasured members of her family, saying that La Loma’s employees are the real key to why the company is prospering.

Noelia also spotlights education as a crucially important component of any entrepreneurial journey. Five years ago, she decided to improve her English, which led her to Dakota County Technical College. Since then she has taken a full array of business entrepreneur courses and will earn her degree in Supervisory Management in May.

As a result of her hard work and success, Noelia recently received the honor of being named the NACCE Entrepreneur of the Year.

Start of a plan

These two examples only begin to tap the barrel of entrepreneurial success. In fact, according to a Nov. 6, 2009, Wall Street Journal article entitled "New Business, Not Small Business, Is What Creates Jobs,” as recently as 2007, two-thirds of all new jobs resulted from new businesses. This gives us the beginning of an action plan to revitalize the economy: create new businesses to generate new jobs.

Certainly, this is easier said than done, but I believe one way we can breathe new life into the entrepreneurial spirit of this country is by sharing success stories like those of Shai Agassi and Noelia Garcia.

Over the next few months, please send your own entrepreneurial success stories to me at ron.thomas@dctc.edu. Your stories will inspire prospective entrepreneurs and small business owners across the nation and demonstrate that the educational programs and ideas we tout have been effectively put into action. I look forward to hearing from you.

• Strong commitment from college leadership to address the deficiencies of the training facility based on clearly defined needs developed in close consultation with key stakeholders.
• A clearly defined strategic plan that is well communicated and provides direction for new initiatives.
• Active partnership development in successfully leveraging innovative local, state and federal support in capital program development and working collaboratively to meet a common workforce development goals.
• Sustained support and encouragement of members of the college leadership team who are tasked with program design and implementation.

This is the finalarticle in a series of four chronicling the development of the M State, Business and Entrepreneurial Services (BES) in the rural community of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. This article discusses examples of using many and multiple resources including, but not limited to, business counseling, business incubation, building block curriculum, and credit free instruction. In this journey we have come to understand one of the hallmark values of entrepreneurship, the opportunity to "grow our own” ventures, services and systems.

Growing Our Own: Counseling and Coaching

Early in the history of the BES we sought out partnerships with the local Small Business Development Center. Unfortunately for us, local meant an office 50 miles away. Our clients and customers have not found this to be very user friendly so we had to develop other strategies. Recently, we developed a Service Corp of Retired Executives (SCORE) branch housed on our campus inside the BES. This has been a surprisingly beneficial relationship.

Somewhat serendipitously, we discovered we were the experts. BES Director Beth Pridday signed on as a SCORE counselor and heads up the local branch. To date, we have five counselors and, already, we are actively recruiting additional counselors due to a strong demand for services.

From July to November, we had 65 individuals come into the BES to discuss business ideas ranging from aqua farming to training search dogs to starting a helicopter flight school to a skateboard repair shop to a green energy consulting business to a TV media coaching business. Literally, people are coming out of the woodwork.

Growing Our Own: Incubation

In an effort to build comprehensive services, we intended to build a business incubator on campus. At the 7th Annual NACCE Conference in Chicago, Beth was able to gain a wealth of information and pointers from fellow NACCE members regarding incubators and strategies for a successful incubation venture. On November 13, 2009, the incubator opened with seven of the nine spaces already leased. We are in negotiation with multiple entrepreneurs to fill the remaining offices and plan to construct three to six additional spaces in the summer.

Again, we have extended our reach to the greater region. We are partnering with a small mixed-use incubator on the White Earth Reservation 30 miles north and with a retail incubator and commercial kitchen incubator 50 miles east to increase coordination and regionalize incubation in rural Minnesota.

Growing Our Own: Outreach, Outreach, Outreach

We have worked diligently to promote entrepreneurship, erase territories and eliminate boundaries. We have journeyed to multiple rural communities to seek out entrepreneurs and provide services. This strategy has allowed us to offer noncredit courses in four different communities and develop networks for incubation throughout the region. In April 2010 we will conduct our inaugural high school business plan competition. Several board members and staff persons traveled to area high schools to pitch the competition to superintendents, students, and teachers.

Growing Our Own: Right People in the Right Places

Beth, our director, has become quite a road warrior, serving on multiple boards and introducing the BES to economic developers and community leaders throughout the area. Above all other components and strategies we have employed, I have found this principle to be paramount; employ an entrepreneur. Beth has seen so many opportunities that we had not previously, she is extremely connected in the community and the business world, and she has the energy and content expertise to bring the BES to a level none of us previously expected.

Finally, it has been a pleasure to recount our steps, and, at times missteps, and appreciate the progress and successes realized. I sincerely hope that some of the journey we have trodden will assist you in developing your enterprise, services, or curriculum. I would highly recommend chronicling your journey; the reflection will be beneficial and the documentation will help with public relations, marketing, and grant making.

For more information about Business & Entrepreneurial Services of M State, contact Cristobal "Cris” Valdez at (218) 846-3778 or via email at cris.valdez@minnesota.edu.

Of course, community colleges have long been accustomed to doing a lot with a little. So it should come as no surprise that NACCE members have found ways to offer students, entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs outstanding–and affordable–events that address the rising demand for good information on how to start and build a business.

We interviewed NACCE members in Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania and found they all have learned the same lesson: Building relationships is the key to being able to stretch your budget dollars for maximum impact. People in your community–and even from afar–are amazingly willing to lend a hand if you ask for their help.

Being Entrepreneurial

Beth Pridday, director of the Business & Entrepreneurial Services Center at Minnesota State Community and Technical College in Detroit Lakes, MN, is an experienced entrepreneur who has quickly become an expert at putting together entrepreneurship education opportunities with a thin budget. "Everything I do has to be low cost or no cost,” she says. "I have to find sponsors, or I have to get creative with speakers who want to be paid for appearing. Forging relationships with these folks and having them understand that part of working with us is charitable–a way to give back–is essential.”

Pridday knows her audience needs programming that is affordable. Building on an existing free speaker series that featured local entrepreneurs who gave inspirational talks without taking a fee, this school year she expanded the series to include regionally and even nationally known content experts. The inspirational events remained free, and the six events with content experts have very affordable fees. Those who attend just one event pay $15; attending four events costs $40 and attending all six costs just $50.

The Coleman Foundation Elevator Grant Pridday received at the NACCE Conference helped pay for marketing and speaker fees. She also sought sponsorships, asking for small amounts like $50 or $100 that were used for marketing. But when it came to speaker fees, Pridday really got creative.

"I called each speaker and negotiated with them,” she says. To get people who were used to earning, in some cases, thousands of dollars, she worked to create revenue-sharing opportunities around their talks. For example, some speakers are giving hour-long workshops after their talks that provide a more in-depth look at their topic; the speakers keep the fees charged for these add-on events. In other cases, speakers have books that they want to sell.

"One of the speakers came from a distance, and I was able to find another location about an hour away from us where she could do a second presentation that made her trip worthwhile even though we weren’t paying what she usually makes to speak,” says Pridday, who also managed to get a local hotel to donate a one-night stay to the traveling speaker.

It Takes a Community

Assistant Professor Sherry Tshibangu at Monroe Community College, Rochester, NY, and her co-event founders, entrepreneurs Bob Spinelli and Jeffrey Shepard, leveraged the power of relationships to launch "Pathways to Entrepreneurial Success,” an annual one-day community wide event for aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners. During a year of planning, they built a coalition of academic, business and government organizations that resulted in an event that attracted nearly 400 people last November. The event was so successful that people are already looking forward to next year’s edition.

The event’s $14,000 budget was low, considering its impact and quality. There were two plenary sessions, a keynote luncheon speaker and two breakout sessions during which attendees had a choice of 10 topics designed to help entrepreneurs. All of this was offered to students for $10 and to the general public for $15. "We didn’t want cost to be an issue, but we thought it was important to attach a monetary value to the event,” says Tshibangu. About two-thirds of the attendees were from the community and one-third were students.

The event team began their fund-raising by going to the City of Rochester and the Rochester Business Alliance, who jumped on board immediately. "We also went to local businesses and by the time we approached the college about supporting the idea, we already had $4,000 committed,” says Tshibangu. "Other funding sources included five area colleges, including Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the University of Rochester, community resources such as the Small Business Development Center and SCORE, and several local businesses. We wanted the entrepreneurial forum to be collaborative, so we actively solicited multiple sponsors. Sponsorships ranged from $500 to $2,500 with most sponsorships at the $1,000 level.”

A number of the speakers in the breakout sessions were also sponsors and entrepreneurs. For relatively little money, they got to expose their business expertise to a wide audience. Entrepreneurship students at Monroe also were involved in making the event happen. "We engaged the students in service learning,” says Tshibangu. "Their involvement included developing promotional materials, feedback surveys and managing the registration process.”

Scoring with SCORE

At Lehigh Carbon Community College in Schnecksville, PA, Professor Richard Warner has quickly learned the value networking and relationship building can have for the school’s new Business Enterprise Center (BEC). "The most valuable contact I’ve developed has been with SCORE,” Warner says. "My advantage, and I don’t know if it’s the case all over the U.S., but here SCORE was looking for a place to have their own monthly meetings. They had been paying for meeting space, but we offered our space for free. As a result, we did a full-day conference with them in October. The SCORE relationship is very valuable, but it’s free to us!”

Thanks to the relationships he’s building with SCORE participants, Warner reports that other local business organizations are also starting to take notice of the BEC. "I am finding people are willing to not only donate but to have the BEC market their program or run their workshops now that they know we’re here.”

But the very best relationship Warner says he’s built is with his grant writer. "My first lesson in making this place a success was to get to know my grant writer first hand, and she has been so helpful,” he says. "The biggest thing we’ve done so far is that we had Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour come to campus and that was paid for by a Perkins grant. The cost of the Tour was over $10,000, and no one had tried to do this with Perkins money before, but Perkins paid for the whole thing. Not only was the Tour a huge success on campus, but it also has really helped me advertise my program in the community.”

The Topic Matters

At Bunker Hill Community College’s Center for Community Entrepreneurship, in Boston, MA, choosing a hot topic helped generate loads of help for the Center for Community Entrepreneurship’s (CCE) celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week last November. By focusing on environmental issues, Dean of Professional Studies Bogusia J. Wojciechowska, who spearheaded the creation of the CCE, and CCE Coordinator Jennifer Fukada were able to attract a wide variety of speakers–mostly for free.

"Our theme was going green, and the people who spoke were really interested in this issue so they were willing to speak for free or lower their normal fees,” says Wojciechowska.

"For six events over a five-day period, we paid a minimal amount for two speakers and had eight speakers from local businesses who came and spoke for free because the topic–getting local businesses to think green–was on point for them,” says Fukuda. "For example, two of the free speakers were the head of the Boston office of Zipcar and the founder and CEO of a local restaurant chain. It was a win-win because they got exposure to our students and we got great speakers!”

"When people actually got here, they were really happy to be here and wanted to interact with us more,” says Wojciechowska. "People were surprised at the size of our student body (11,000) and the breadth of our curriculum. For many of them it was the first time they’ve been to a community college and they were impressed.”

As others have experienced, a personal touch helped seal the deal with speakers. "A personal phone call is helpful and most people said yes,” says Fukuda. "People have become more aware of what community colleges are doing due to the downturn in the economy. There is a curiosity and an interest in helping. It’s a matter of targeting people who may have an interest in your campus and building logical partnerships.”