Small Business Assistance

Consulting and Assistance

Each year we conduct free-to-the-public service learning projects for our students who assist small businesses in various sectors of the small business economy: restaurants, wellness, hotels, and so forth.

In the Fall 2008 semester, our students facilitated the 1st Annual Arts Convention in Las Cruces by organizing task forces with local public, private, and grassroots organizations to bring together leaders of city, town, university, and commerce to develop the arts economy. Results included actual interventions, such as a museum scavenger hunt, “Winterfest” to vitalize downtown businesses, and other aggressive marketing of the arts and culture in Las Cruces and the Mesilla Valley.

In 2009 our plan is to continue working with the Las Cruces arts and culture organizations. Many local artists have fledgling small businesses and our students, under faculty guidance, work collaboratively with government, chamber of commerce, education, and grassroots organizations that support small businesses. It also means that we actually work toward changing the infrastructure that supports small business.

Small businesses have morphed into hybrid operations with public and grassroots organizations. For example, public museums cannot sell products, but a grassroots volunteer organization can run a store inside the museum as a foundation. The Chamber of Commerce is recognizing arts and culture as an important small business economy. The City of Las Cruces and Town of Mesilla have arts and culture as strategic small business and tourist economy.