Entrepreneur group retools

DURHAM -- The Council for Entrepreneurial Development recently notified one part-time and three full-time workers they will lose their jobs in a staff reorganization.

That would leave the Durham nonprofit group with eight full-time employees after those workers depart. CED officials also are looking to hire two new staffers soon and a third down the road.

"This is not a cost reduction," said Joan Siefert Rose, president of the support group for entrepreneurs. "It is really a staff reorganization to bring on different skill sets. The impact on the budget is neutral."

Rose said she is retooling the organization to make it more "current" in light of new demands imposed by the ailing economy.

"What might have been effective five years ago ... today the circumstances are completely different," she said.

Rose plans to beef up services for novice entrepreneurs who decide to start a business after losing their jobs, and for advanced companies that would have gone public or been acquired by now if the economy were stronger.

The two positions she is creating will be focused on outreach to early-stage entrepreneurs and outreach to the technology sector.

The cutbacks follow the elimination of five positions this year before Rose took the helm and after the departure of her predecessor, Monica Doss.

Doss ran CED for 22 years and helped make it the nation's largest organization of its kind.

Rose previously was general manager of N.C. Public Radio. After she took over in 2001, WUNC's budget doubled and its staff increased.

CED, with more than 5,000 members, plans to have fewer conferences next year and will outsource event planning.

"We want to have fewer but better conferences," Rose said.

Rose said that unlike last year, when the organization experienced a budget shortfall because of disappointing conference attendance, this year it will break even or run a surplus on its $1.8 million budget.