Each year, the SBA Excellence and Innovation Award honors an SBDC center for excellence in providing value to small businesses and advancing program delivery and management through innovation. Each state has a winner and South Carolina’s 2015 winner is the Rock Hill Area SBDC. This center went on to win the SBA Region IV Excellence and Innovation Award besting centers from nine other states.

Nominee evaluation criteria include client satisfaction, business start-up numbers, job creation, capital infusion, and innovation and success in community economic development. The Rock Hill Area SBDC’s win was also based on the center’s outreach to the Latino community, involvement with University of South Carolina business student exporting projects and a consistently high level of interest in bettering the economic atmosphere of their local community.

South Carolina SBA District Director Elliott Cooper said of the win, “The Rock Hill Area SBDC has proven exceptional, both through the assistance it has given to countless individual entrepreneurs and through the many innovative programs and partnerships it has developed to better serve the business community. We are proud of everything they have accomplished and we are beyond proud to count them as a partner.”