Struggling small businesses get help from UNH students to pivot during pandemic

BOSTON — Internships fell by the wayside at many companies this year, but some college students still found a way to get valuable experience while helping small businesses adapt to a new business environment.

Business students from the University of New Hampshire are working as unpaid consultants at places like Emery Farm in Durham, NH.

With beautiful flowers and fresh produce, the nation’s oldest family-owned farm conveys a sense of serenity, but owner Holly Philbrick says it’s been a tough couple of months trying to adjust to these extraordinary times.

“It was just an unprecedented territory,” said Philbrick. “Once things started to shut down, people were taking precautions, it was like, what do we do next?”

Coming up with new systems for a nursery, a retail market, and preparing gourmet take-out safely was a mammoth task for a small business.

“We all felt our bandwidth was totally tapped, so it was really challenging,” added Philbrick.

Philbrick jumped at the opportunity to get some help from business students at UNH, who were suddenly available.

“We started hearing from our students that they had lost their jobs or internships,” said Kimberly Clark, Director of Career Progression Success at the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at UNH.

Clark said the school came up with the idea of having students serve as unpaid consultants to help “local businesses that might be having some issues due to COVID-19, regarding pivoting to a new way of doing business, or just have some general needs that during the current crisis, they just can’t afford to hire consultants.”

Mary Shotton and two other students are assigned to Emery Farm.

“We’re helping them redesign part of their website and helping them create a better online ordering system because they were having issues with all the mass amounts of new orders that are coming in,” Shotton explained.

The farm is now taking a huge step forward, according to Philbrick.

“We feel this is an opportunity to create a much more robust e-commerce site for our business once it’s set up,” she said.

Along the way, the students are getting something that’s priceless.

“These experiential learning opportunities are very large resume builders,” explained Clark. “They will be doing complex problems such as financial analysis, marketing strategic plans, really helping companies create new data bases and websites.”

Shotton also believes working through a pandemic is providing her with an opportunity to grow in other ways.

“I feel like I am learning professional skills, but I’m also learning how to be flexible and adapt to different problems that have arisen recently,” she said.

Although the students aren’t paid, they do get a stipend to help them cover any expenses they might incur. That’s being covered by donations from alumni at the business school.

Download the free Boston 25 News app for up-to-the-minute push alerts

>> Complete local and national coronavirus coverage here

RESOURCES:

- Massachusetts Coronavirus Information

- Boston Coronavirus Information

- Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Watch Boston 25 NOW

- Download our free apps for your phone and smart TV