| The Delaware Small Business Development Center (SBDC) provides services to Delaware small businesses to support their growth and enhanced profitability. These services take the form of information access assistance, training programs, and one-on-one counseling.; Counseling services are the preferred delivery mode for most small business owners. However, as counseling is a scare resource, the Delaware SBDC needs to substitute other forms of assistance for some part of the counseling services. Through needs assessment, the SBDC discovered that a comprehensive certificate program was viewed by small business owners as valuable and a potential replacement for some counseling services.; In this paper, I examine the background for a decision to offer such a program, determine the configuration of a certificate program to meet the need, review the primary issues surrounding the implementation of a certificate program in small business management, specify a detailed plan for full implementation, and report the summary evaluation results from the pilot offering of the Delaware Small Business Management Certificate Program. |
