Entrepreneur's HelpDesk

Tate Center for Entrepreneurship at the College of Charleston’s School of Business and Economics, in cooperation with the local partners (City of Charleston’s Minority Business Enterprises Office, Small Business Development Center, SCORE), launched a unique pilot consulting program: the Entrepreneur’s HelpDesk. The HelpDesk, staffed by undergraduate Student In Free Enterprise (SIFE) students and supervised by business faculty, is designed to provide free consulting support to Charleston Area businesses by leveraging the intellectual capacity of the College of Charleston and pairing the needs of local businesses with available business development resources in the area (SBDC, Local Consultants, SCORE).

Small firms face a lack the resources and for some the knowledge to develop potential business opportunities. We have created a unique partnership by leveraging a collaborative group of private, public and academic resources to provide these services in support of business development initiatives, realizing that sustaining a robust and vibrant regional economy is dependent on job growth and the ability to compete in the regional and global market environment. Using the concept called Economic Gardening, teams of students complete a business needs assessment to provide customized market analysis and data that open the door to new growth opportunity for their clients.
Economic Gardening is entrepreneurial approach to economic development, pioneered in Littleton, CO and tested in Hartford, CT (www.ct-egg.org), which is designed to match the intellectual resources of the College of Charleston and the School of Business and Economics with the needs of entrepreneurial ventures in the Charleston area and to promote nurturing environments for businesses to grow.
Services provided include:

Selection of businesses into this program is done on a semester basis (in association with entrepreneurship related courses offered at the College of Charleston) in consultation with our local partners and based on available appropriate courses. You may contact David Desplaces, desplacesd@cofc.edu or 843-953-6446 if you have any questions.