Liz Gray is the state director for the New Hampshire Small Business Development Center. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – Just days after Great American Downtown executive director Paul Shea warned local small businessmen and women that one of their most valuable resources – the New Hampshire Small Business Development Center – could face drastic cuts in state funding, Gov. Chris Sununu issued a statement that stands to brighten the center’s economic picture.

Initially, the proposed biennial state budget for fiscal 2022-23 showed the SBDC receiving only $50,000 in state funding for the first year, and nothing at all the second year.

Worse yet, according to state SBDC director Liz Gray, those drastic cuts could very well have jeopardized the federal funding the SBDC receives from the U.S. Small Business Administration, mainly because the SBA requires a 50% match.

The SBDC this year received about $750,000 from the SBA, Gray said. The current state budget, which expires June 30, provided $880,000 to the SBDC, she added.

But going forward, the revised revenue estimates Sununu provided Thursday will likely create a sunnier economic forecast for the SBDC and several other agencies named in Sununu’s letter, or at least soften the economic blow for which many had been preparing.

The revised figures, Sununu said in Thursday’s notice, are based on updated figures just released by the Department of Administrative Services.

The updates show stronger than expected revenue estimates, which, when the proposed budget was first presented, “assumed that taxes collected by the Department of Revenue Administration would be 7% below” what was initially planned for.

But the new figures, according to Sununu, put estimated revenue at 17% above the original plan, a 24% swing that Sununu called “a tremendous improvement that speaks to the robust nature of this economic recovery.”

While the amount of funding Sununu said he will “encourage the House to reintroduce” when the representatives begin their phase of the budget process isn’t yet known, he indicated the SBDC will receive “state-match” funds that will meet the SBA’s 50% requirement.

In addition to the SBDC, the agencies Sununu said will benefit from the new revenue figures include ?

• The Department of Corrections, to help maintain transitional housing services

• The Department of IT, to fund existing shared services positions

• The Department of Health and Human Services, to fund family resource centers

• The Department of Safety, to fund existing civilian positions

The SBDC, meanwhile, has been hailed among New Hampshire small businessmen and women with such phrases as “a godsend” and “our lifeline” in the weeks and months after the COVID-19 pandemic set in.

Founded in the mid-1980s as a program of the University of New Hampshire’s Peter T. Paul College of Business & Economics, the agency is currently operating on $880,000 in state funding, the amount provided in the state’s current two-year budget, which expires June 30.

The agency also received roughly $1.28 million in funding contained in the CARES Act, the federal program that provided emergency pandemic-related funds to a variety of businesses and entities statewide.

That funding, however, will come to an end this fall, just months after the state’s new biennial budget takes effect July 1.

For Gray, the state SBDC director, Sununu’s announcement helped ease to some degree the widespread concern triggered by the initial budget proposal he unveiled in mid-February.

She said that while the SBDC receives funding from other sources, including UNH and a handful of other partners, it depends heavily on its state funding to sustain many of its programs and initiatives.

“Without state funds, I don’t see us able to make up (the difference) with our other funding sources,” she said. “We wouldn’t be able to continue the services we offer.”

Looking back over the past year, Gray said she is “so proud of the way our team responded” when the pandemic set in.

“We supported a lot of businesses during the pandemic,” she said. According to her records, the SBDC helped out some 7,178 businesses statewide in 2020.

Support comes in many forms, Gray said, citing its Resiliency Academy and its cybersecurity program and the e-courses as examples of initiatives the staff undertakes.

Add to those the “hundreds of webinars” the SBDC offers, thanks, Gray said, “to our small but mighty team of 19.”

Among the scores of Nashua-based businesses to which the SBDC has provided assistance is owner Joyce Dales’s “Buzzagogo,” a homeopathic products retailer who created a nasal swab cold remedy called “Cold Bee Gone.”

“If it weren’t for them, my company wouldn’t exist,” Dales said, referring to the SBDC. “The things they do for small businesses, it’s amazing.”

Dales said she’s been getting guidance from the SBDC for about 10 years, a relationship that went from her mentor “nurturing me by writing ideas on sticky-notes to selling my product at little, local country stores … to the shelves of CVS,” the national pharmacy chain that now sells her “Cold Bee Gone” as an over-the-counter, or OTC, herbal cold remedy.

There’s a good chance, Dales said, that there wouldn’t be as many women-owned small businesses in operation today if not for the SBCD.

“I can’t tell you how many women-owned businesses wouldn’t exist if not for them,” she said.

Shea, the Great American Downtown director who sent the letter cautioning local small businesses about SBDC’s potential funding crisis, said Thursday that he and city officials, along with the business owners themselves, are encouraged by Sununu’s statement that the agency and others are likely to benefit from the higher?(-)than?(-)expected state revenues.

“We’ll continue to watch it,” he said, adding that he encourages business owners to contact state legislators on behalf of the agency.

Historically, Shea said, SBDC has a “tried-and-true track record of helping New Hampshire businesses for more than 36 years.”

He said the agency’s value to local small businesses, especially those in the downtown area, has been on full display since the COVID-19 pandemic set in.

SBDC representatives “have been there with laser focus, helping business owners keep their doors open … their futures hopeful, and their staff and customers safe,” Shea said.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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