SALISBURY, Md. - A Salisbury group that supportsĀ female business owners received a big push from the Small Business Administration. Their new partnership is guiding women business leaders in the age of COVID-19.
The non-profit, Maryland Capital Enterprises, is helping small business owners, especially women, navigate a new normal. The group has been running a Women's Business Center for years now.
"Women are still a minority in small business. Even though we have come such a long way over the years, but we are still considered a minority as far as being small business owners," Lisa Twilley, director of the Women's Business Center for MCE, says.
The center provides guidance and training to female business owners. Through a new partnership with the SBA, the center received grant funding to expand their resources and advice women through the pandemic. Donna Compher, co-owner of Sisters Wine Bar in Berlin, says she received guidance from the center when applying for the PPP program.
"It was a crazy time. No one knew what was going on but Maryland Capital Enterprise helped me a lot through that," Compher says. "They helped with a lot of the processing so through the Bank of Ocean City, you have to go through a bank. But, they helped me with every step of that. Just knowing what I'm supposed to do and how to fill it out."
The SBA's first Women's Business Center is headquartered in Rockville, Md. U.S. Senator Ben Cardin helped push to get funding to Salisbury.
"On the Eastern Shore, we found women owned businesses were having a difficult time to access the bureaucracy to get these loans processed. They didn't have the same connections that a lot of the other business located in our urban centers or those that are the larger, small businesses," Sen. Cardin says.Ā "So with the women's business center, they have a friend. They have someone who can help them navigate the system and tell them what they need to do, direct them to the right partner that can advance their business. So it really provides them the mentoring, the experience, the help that they need in order to navigate the challenges in the commercial world. When you're a small business operator, you don't have a big staff. You don't have a lot of extra people on staff that can help you do this but when you have the Women's Business Center, you do have backup and support to deal with these issues."
The SBA also created a Women's Business Center in Baltimore, so that makes threeĀ centers currently in Maryland. The SBA has a network of more than 100 similar facilities that help women and other underserved entrepreneurs across the country.
MCE was self-funded until this partnership and serviced the entire Eastern Shore, plus areas near Baltimore. Twilley says the funding and partnership with the SBA is a huge help.
"The funds backing us definitely give us more resources, more consultants that can help reach the many needs of many people," Twilley adds. "It's awesome that we have this backing and this partnership with them because we can offer so many more services and programs."