Published July 2001

Center opens as a resource for business owners

By Kimberly Hilden
Herald Business Journal Assistant Editor

This month, the Northwest Women’s Business Center opens in Everett, offering technical aid and access to funding programs for Snohomish County’s women business owners.

“The need is very great in this area for this type of assistance,” said Kay Lasco, Vice President and Director of the center, which is an arm of Community Capital Development, a nonprofit organization that also operates the Seattle Women’s Business Center.

To meet that need, the CCD staff submitted a grant application in early December to the U.S. Small Business Administration to create another women’s business center. A month later, the SBA awarded the grant — $150,000 a year for five years — to start the Northwest Women’s Business Center.

Since then, Lasco has been building a client base for the center, using temporary office space courtesy of the Snohomish County Economic Development Council.

Starting July 1, however, Lasco and a business assistance officer will staff the permanent Everett office, co-located with the county EDC at 728 134th St. SW, Suite 219, as well as travel to satellite offices located throughout a five-county area including Snohomish, Whatcom, Skagit, Island and Kitsap counties.

Their goal: help women business owners succeed.

To do that, the center will offer assistance in writing business plans and preparing loan applications for start-up ventures as well as providing help with marketing plans and staffing decisions for the mature and growing business.

The center also plans to sponsor educational seminars similar to those offered by the Seattle center through its Women’s Network for Entrepreneurial Training (WNET) program.

“I’m going to duplicate that here beginning in August,” Lasco said, adding that she still is looking for co-sponsorship of the training and networking program and hopes to get local chambers of commerce and banks to come on board.

Such partnerships are important for the center’s success, said Lasco, who will work with other business-resource programs in the area, such as the Small Business Development Center and DownHome Washington, “to provide our services, enhance their services and partner with them to provide workshops, trainings, those types of things.”

One of Lasco’s goals is to offer some of the training programs and workshops in Spanish “because we do have a large Spanish-(speaking) population here,” she said.

“Another thing we’re going to be ... focusing on up here, too, is child care, because we do have the Washington State MicroLoan Program for child care,” Lasco said, referring to the program that includes loans up to $5,000 for in-home child-care operations and $25,000 for child-care centers.

Through its affiliation with the CCD, the Northwest Women’s Business Center also has access to several other loan programs, including the SBA Prequalification Pilot Loan Program, which uses intermediaries to help prospective borrowers in developing loan application packages and securing loans; the SBA 7(a) Loan Guaranty Program; and several in-house programs, Lasco said.

For more information, call 425-239-6898 or send e-mail to kayl.nwwbc@seattleccd.com.

Back to the top/Business Women 2001 Main Menu