If you’re a new business owner in the Worcester area, you might be a little overwhelmed by the resources available to you.
The Center for Women and Enterprise, the Central Massachusetts Small Business Development Center, InnerCity Entrepreneurs, the Martin Luther King Jr. Business Empowerment Center and Worcester’s SCORE chapter are all on hand right in the city offering classes and support for small businesses.
Sum Of Its Parts
Now, those five groups, along with the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Springfield office and the Massachusetts Latino Chamber of Commerce in Springfield, have joined together in The Worcester Business Resource Alliance, an umbrella group designed to help businesses figure out what’s available to them.
“Rather than working against each other, I thought we could work with each other and complement each other,” said Carrie Johnson, Central Massachusetts director of the CWE.
Johnson was the driving force behind getting the alliance started, but she said she thinks the idea has been brewing for some time.
The group has now held two monthly meetings, and it recently cosponsored its first event, a program at the MLK Center featuring Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray.
“Everyone worked on getting word out,” Johnson said. “It was very successful. It was a great turnout. So when we work together that’s what can happen.”
Besides offering a united front to promote events, the WBRA is designed to help the staff of the various organizations better serve their clients. By learning more about the other organizations within the group, Johnson said she’s able to advise businesses about opportunities she might otherwise not know about.
That’s important, she said, because all the groups offer different things. CWE has a visioning program for people who are in the earliest stages of considering a new endeavor. The MLK Center has an incubation space and offers job training. SCORE will send representatives into a company to troubleshoot problems.
