{"id":105668,"date":"2016-04-18T01:09:33","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T07:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/small-business-development-center-looks-to-encourage-female-founders\/"},"modified":"2016-04-18T01:09:33","modified_gmt":"2016-04-18T07:09:33","slug":"small-business-development-center-looks-to-encourage-female-founders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/small-business-development-center-looks-to-encourage-female-founders\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Business Development Center looks to encourage female founders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Ross\"
Ross<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Women are opening businesses at a rate five times faster than the national average, and the Small Business Development Center at Fort Lewis College is looking to encourage that trend.<\/p>\n

To help bolster women-, minority- and veteran-owned businesses, the first grant that Liz Ross applied for when she took over as the executive director of the SBDC in September was for $5,000 to focus on these groups.<\/p>\n

The state grant helps support one-on-one consulting and legal guidance the center provides for these business owners.<\/p>\n

It makes sense to pursue these kinds of grants because more than 60 percent of small businesses nationally are owned by women, Ross said.<\/p>\n

Women are also opening businesses faster, according to a report funded by American Express. Between 2007 and 2016, the number of women-owned firms increased by 45 percent, while the number of all businesses increased by 9 percent.<\/p>\n

Heather Freeman, founder of the Gutsy Girl Club, recently took advantage of the free hour of legal guidance to help with questions about trademarking the name of her organization<\/p>\n

She is facing competition from an author who is using the Gutsy Girl Club name online.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat brand recognition is really important for the work that I do and to set it apart from what other organizations may be doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Freeman moved to Durango in August and brought her group that focuses on empowering women and girls with her. She founded it as a benefit corporation, which is legal hybrid between a for-profit business and a nonprofit.<\/p>\n

Freeman started the group in 2013 in Connecticut, and 100 percent of her proceeds are re-invested in the organization. So, she appreciated the support from the SBDC.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have the funds to put forth on those things as easily as a more established organization,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ross also believes that veterans and minorities in the area have entrepreneurial potential that is going untapped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking for more opportunities for women, minorities and veterans,\u201d she said. She wants to develop businesses on the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute reservations as well.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women-, veteran- and minority-owned businesses focus of grant<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105669,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[21],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-cortez"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105668"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}