My Nonprofit Reviews

DBRC helped TASI from the 1st visit. In a very cold winter day early 2008, Mrs. Beverly Herndon (TASI's marketing coordinator) and I visited Christina Jumba of Pittsburgh DBRC at her office. The question in our mind was where to start to look for government contracts. Neither of us had any prior experience in government contracting for local governments, despite my technical experience with federal contracts. Christina sat down with us and listened to our questions and requests and we registered with BDRC. It seemed that she came up with a relavent new suggestion every 10 min in the conversation and she pulled out the contact information and the program/contract information immediately following every one of her suggestion. A couple hours later, we left her office with newly found confidence. We were grateful for all the information we received from DBRC. However, sorting all the information, we found out that there were more things we needed to know but knew very little, such as liability, insurance, interlectural property, subcontractors and loans, etc. Again, I started to wonder what to do next. Surprisingly, as if the DBRC sensed the needs of small and start up businesses, it started to send out seminar announcements and all the seminars were free of charge. I went to most of the seminars and the information that I learned from the seminars were either what I was wondering about, such as subcontractors, or, what I would need soon, such as financing the business. In addition to the seminars themselves, the psycological impact on small business owners is positive. The up hill battle of building a business is no longer a lonely daily battle. ALthough I do not know all the answers to my questions but I know that I know where I could go to find the answers. It's a confidence builder that the resources are within reach. In addition to the visit and seminars, TASI also attended the network events by DBRC and met the other business people. At one of the events, I found a potential business collaberator and we actually developed a proposal together on energy savings. We are now working in the area of energy saving product development and engineering services with a lot better market understanding. However, we are still looking forward to turn to DBRC for the resources to solve our new questions, such as business collaberation that is very important for small businesses as most of small businesses can not handle every facet of a project and need to work with each other to fulfill customer requirements. We wish DBRC continue to grow and be the resources for the thirsty and sometimes lonely small business owners. DBRC's resources are the necessary nutrients for our business growth. Susan Chang TASI 724-2887467

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