Spokane Slavic Association
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What we do — 03

Business Development Center

Helping Businesses Start, Connect & Grow.

Entrepreneurship can create more than income for one person. Successful businesses create jobs, purchase services, develop professional networks, support families, sponsor community initiatives, and contribute to the local economy.

The Spokane Slavic Association Business Development Center helps aspiring entrepreneurs and existing small business owners turn ideas into opportunities through practical assistance, education, connections, visibility, and community-based business development.

Whether you are considering your first business, recently launched, or are looking for ways to grow an established company, the Business Development Center can help you identify your next step.

Business Startup & Growth Services

From Idea to Opportunity.

SSA provides practical assistance to help aspiring entrepreneurs and existing business owners understand their options, organize their ideas, identify resources, and plan their next steps — business planning, structure and registration information, marketing, financial planning, access-to-capital readiness, and growth planning.

Explore Business Startup & Growth Services
A business owner sharing product samples at a community event.

Business Education & Networking

Learn. Connect. Grow.

SSA brings entrepreneurs, professionals, businesses, financial institutions, government agencies, educators, and community partners together through practical educational and networking opportunities — workshops, guest speakers, entrepreneur meetups, and business-to-business connections.

Explore Business Education & Networking
A business workshop where entrepreneurs listen to a presenter and take notes.

SSA Business Directory

Connect Businesses With the Community.

The SSA Business Directory helps community members discover businesses and professionals serving Spokane and surrounding areas — especially useful for people looking for businesses that provide services in Russian, Ukrainian, or other languages.

Search the Business Directory
A local business owner talks with visitors at her table during an SSA community event.

Clean Start

A Social Enterprise Creating Pathways to Entrepreneurship.

Clean Start provides professional residential and commercial cleaning services while helping participating refugees earn income, develop practical experience, and work toward building their own cleaning businesses. Clean Start also generates mission-aligned revenue that helps support SSA's broader nonprofit work.

Explore Clean Start
A Clean Start team member cleaning a home.

A Business Development Pathway

Every entrepreneur begins in a different place.

Someone may attend an SSA workshop because they are considering starting a business. That person may later request individual business assistance, register a company, join the Business Directory, attend networking events, find customers, hire employees, and eventually become a community partner or sponsor.

Another person may begin by gaining practical experience through Clean Start and later develop an independent business.

There is no single path, but the progression may look like:

Idea Education Planning Startup Customers Growth Employer Community Partner

The Business Development Center is designed to support connections along that journey.

A proud new business owner stands in the doorway of her small shop on opening day.

Connecting Entrepreneurs With Resources

SSA does not need to provide every business service directly.

Entrepreneurs may need expertise from accountants, attorneys, lenders, banks, government agencies, marketing professionals, insurance professionals, educational institutions, business organizations, or other specialists.

SSA works to build relationships with these resources so entrepreneurs can more easily identify and connect with appropriate assistance.

Our role may be to provide practical support directly, organize education, make an introduction, or help someone identify where specialized expertise is needed.

An entrepreneur meets with a financial advisor to review her business numbers.

Connecting Businesses With Each Other

Strong local businesses can also become resources for one another.

One business needs marketing. Another needs accounting. Another needs transportation, cleaning, construction, technology, printing, insurance, or professional services. Others need employees, vendors, customers, or partners.

Through networking, the Business Directory, workshops, events, and community relationships, SSA helps create opportunities for these connections to happen.

  • Business ↔ Business
  • Business ↔ Customer
  • Business ↔ Employee
  • Business ↔ Community
Two local business owners in conversation at an SSA community business event.

From Workforce Development to Entrepreneurship

The Business Development Center also creates a natural connection with SSA's Workforce & Economic Mobility pillar.

For some people, the pathway toward economic mobility begins with finding employment and building professional skills.

For others, those skills and experiences eventually create an opportunity to become an entrepreneur.

Job Seeker Employee Skilled Professional Entrepreneur Business Owner Employer

A business owner may then create employment opportunities for other community members—continuing the cycle.

Explore Workforce & Economic Mobility
A former employee, now a small-business owner, trains a new hire in his workshop.

For established businesses

Your Business Can Be Part of the Network.

The Business Development Center is not only for people starting businesses.

Established companies and professionals can participate by:

  • Joining the Business Directory
  • Attending networking events
  • Presenting educational workshops
  • Providing professional expertise
  • Hiring community members
  • Becoming vendors or partners
  • Sponsoring programs and events
  • Supporting emerging entrepreneurs
  • Collaborating on community initiatives

This creates opportunities for businesses to grow their visibility while contributing their knowledge, connections, and resources to the broader community.

List Your Business Partner With the Business Development Center
Established local business owners exchange business cards at a networking evening.

Business Growth Can Strengthen the Community

A successful local business creates impact beyond its owner. Businesses can:

  • Create jobs.

    Employment creates income and stability for individuals and families.

  • Purchase from other businesses.

    Local business-to-business relationships circulate economic activity throughout the community.

  • Develop professional networks.

    Entrepreneurs share information, referrals, expertise, and opportunities.

  • Support community initiatives.

    Businesses can become sponsors, donors, volunteers, mentors, and partners.

  • Create new leaders.

    Entrepreneurs who succeed can help others follow similar pathways.

That is why SSA sees business development as an important part of long-term community self-sufficiency.

Building Sustainable Community Solutions

The Business Development Center also gives SSA opportunities to explore mission-aligned social enterprise.

Clean Start is our current developed example: a practical service that creates income and entrepreneurial experience while generating revenue that supports SSA's charitable mission.

Over time, SSA may explore additional social enterprise opportunities when there is a clear community need, a sustainable business model, and meaningful potential for employment or entrepreneurship.

Our goal is not to create businesses simply for the sake of generating revenue.

The goal is to develop opportunities where economic activity and community impact reinforce one another.

A Clean Start cleaning team reviews the day's schedule together before heading out.

Start your next step

Whatever Stage You're At, We Can Help.

Start. Connect. Grow. Give Back.

The Business Development Center is designed to help transform individual entrepreneurship into broader economic opportunity. When entrepreneurs have access to information, relationships, customers, and opportunities, businesses can grow. And when local businesses grow, they can become employers, partners, sponsors, mentors, and resources for the entire community.

Get Business Assistance View Business Events Search the Business Directory Contact the Business Development Center