Local Group Is Contender for $100,000 Innovation Grant

An innovative program that utilizes state unemployment insurance tax funds to pay for educating small business owners has placed a Ventura County group among the top candidates for a $100,000 grant from the Innovations In American Government program at Harvard University.

The Ventura County Entrepreneur Academy is among 100 groups nationwide, narrowed down from an original 1,451, being considered for the grant provided by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the Ford Foundation.

“We are looking for public policy projects that are the most innovative, the most novel, and the most successful,” said Trudy Jeffers of the Innovations in American Government program. “We want projects that can serve as models that other governments can look to.”

In 1994, the Ventura County Entrepreneur Academy, a county-run program that trains business owners in marketing, customer identification, and other aspects business operation, used $290,700 from the California Employment Training Panel to contract with instructors from California Lutheran University and private business, to train more than 230 local business owners.

“The idea is to help small business owners become more successful so they can create more jobs,” said Academy administrator Hui Ling Tanouye. “We covered topics that business owners deal with on a day-to-day basis.”

Tanouye said follow-up evaluations showed Academy graduates had added 286 jobs and increased gross monthly revenue by 16%, or $36 million.

“There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there who perhaps have the technical knowledge but not the business sense,” said Tanouye. “There are training funds out there but they always go to training workers. It’s the owners who are more important because they control the fate of the workers. One business owner could end up laying off a lot of workers because of poor judgment.”

Tanouye said the Academy is scheduled to begin another training session in July, with funding from federal Community Development Block grants. A final decision on the Innovation in American Government grants program will be made next fall.