B-School Group Advises Roxbury Small Businesses

Business School students are currently advising Negro businessmen in Roxbury on techniques in small business.

The group, formed last winter, is working under a three-year $50,000 Ford Foundation grant. If the program is successful in keeping Negroes in business, Ford will probably renew the grant and start similar programs in other cities, said Peter J. Siris, a second-year Business School student and a member of the organizing committee of the program.

The purpose of the program is to teach local Negro business-owners how to use basic business methods such as taking inventories, reporting taxes, and pricing goods appropriately.

In addition, two of the seven students on the organizing committee, Siris and Andrew E. Neuman, also a second-year business student, are conducting a research project on Negroes as consumers.

The business students are paid $2 an hour and spend about ten hours a week in Roxbury in teams of seven or eight consultants. Each team advises one client, including businesses such as the Bay State Banner, a local newspaper; the New School, a private Negro school; and local stores.

About five or six of these local stores, estimated Siris, would have gone out of business without the help of this program. In addition to helping the Negro business-owners attain self-sufficiency, the group hopes eventually to help with the establishment of a Negro-run electronics corporation, a mutual fund, and maybe a supermarket, said Siris.