[275] Small Loans, Big Help For Small Murfreesboro Businesses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Jan. 27, 2010
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

SMALL LOANS, BIG HELP FOR SMALL MURFREESBORO BUSINESSES
MTSU Center Provides Expertise for City Government’s Microloan Program

(MURFREESBORO) – The City of Murfreesboro, in partnership with MTSU’s Jennings A. Jones College of Business and the Tennessee Small Business Development Center (TSBDC), will announce the establishment of a microenterprise loan fund at 3 p.m. tomorrow, Jan. 28, at the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, 501 Memorial Blvd.
With money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Program, the fund will provide approved applicants with allocations to expand, improve or create small businesses that might not be eligible for traditional commercial financing.
Dr. Patrick Geho, state executive director of the MTSU - TSBDC Lead Center and associate professor of business communication and entrepreneurship, says applicants must meet HUD’s income qualifications or express a desire to hire low-income individuals who can achieve a greater income status. Interest rates will be negotiable.
The concept of microfinance is most popularly associated with Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize-winner and former MTSU professor, whose Grameen Bank provides microloans in his native Bangladesh. However, says Geho, “the model being applied here is different. There is no interaction between borrowers, as is the case in the Bangladeshi model, which also depends upon a communal business effort and peer pressure to insure the loan is repaid.”
The TSBDC’s role in the process will include working with borrowers initially to help them understand the loan process and to assist them with the implementation of the loans after the city issues them.
Linebaugh Public Library will host the first in a series of microloan orientation training workshops conducted by the TSBDC at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 11, in the second floor board room. Reservations are required. For more information, go to www.linebaugh.org, or call 615-893-4131, extension 110, to register.
For more information on the TSBDC, call the center at 615-898-2745.


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With three Nobel Prize winners among its alumni and former faculty, Middle Tennessee State University confers master’s degrees in 10 areas, the Specialist in Education degree, the Doctor of Arts degree and the Doctor of Philosophy degree. MTSU is ranked among the top 100 public universities in the nation in the Forbes “America’s Best Colleges” 2009 survey.