PNC gives Rutgers $25K for coaching program

The Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative, launched in May by the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development at the Newark campus, provides seminars and individual consultations with faculty and graduate students.

Linda Bowden, regional president for northern New Jersey for PNC Financial Services Group, said the nation’s unemployment rate exceeds 10 percent, “but as businesses start to get back on their feet, they will put people back to work. We’ll know we’re successful when the unemployment rate goes down, and we know that will take time — which is why helping small businesses get back on their feet is so important.”

Pioneers “is for entrepreneurs to take their businesses to the next level,” said Jeffrey Robinson, assistant professor of management and global business at Rutgers, adding the $25,000 from PNC “helps us tremendously. We have 40 now, and we will add another 50 in 2010.” PNC is Pioneers’ first corporate sponsor; Robinson hopes others will follow.

Of the 40 Pioneer businesses, 35 have employees, and all have growth ambitions, Robinson said.

“These are resourceful entrepreneurs who are reorienting their businesses as they figure out where the market is,” he said.

For example, a home-inspection business saw business decline during the home-sales slump, “but he also has a pest-control business that is going up, and meanwhile some areas of housing are coming back and he’s tapping into new markets.”

The initial funding for Pioneers was provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. The project serves Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris, Passaic, Union, Sussex and Warren counties.

E-mail to Beth Fitzgerald at bfitzgerald@njbiz.com