Arts Business Resource Guide
A guide to free and nominally priced non-profit organizations and government resources for Rhode Island small businesses.

The Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston
http://www.artsandbusinesscouncil.org/
The mission of the Arts & Business Council is to strengthen a vibrant arts community by providing quality direct legal and business services and ongoing educational programs to the artists and cultural organizations within Massachusetts.

AS220 Community Printshop
http://as220.org/printshop
The AS220 Community Printshop is committed to providing education and resources as cheaply as possible, while at the same time providing rewarding teaching opportunities for experienced key-members and printmakers in the community. The cost of each class reflects its length.

AS220 Labs
http://www.as220.org/labs
AS220 Labs is a teaching space, workspace, and community junk pile for supporting open hardware and software projects. The Labs help to build new technically literate audiences and artists by running workshops and providing access to tools and techniques such as those of the Providence Fab Lab.

AS220 Fab Lab
http://www.as220.org/labs/fab-lab
AS220 Labs is proposing to expand the scope of the lab from software and electronics instruction to include the personal fabrication and machining technologies of a Fab Lab. Contracted work, including museum and exhibition display, theatrical scene shop fabrication, artist project support, and customization of consumer items (e.g. laser-etched laptops).

AS220 Photographic Memory
http://www.as220.org/photographicmemory/hirepm.htm
Photographic Memory offers professional photography services for companies, non-profit corporations and individuals. We photograph events, environmental portraiture, products, architecture and industrial photography with state of the art digital equipment.

Business Information Center
http://www.sec.state.ri.us/corps/businessinfo/bic.htm
Our First Stop Business Information Center makes it easier for you to start or grow a business in Rhode Island. First Stop provides full-service support by providing customized packages that make it easier to apply for financing, obtain permits, make contacts and get answers from government at every level.

Center for Design and Business
http://www.centerdesignbusiness.org/
The Rhode Island School of Design’s Center for Design and Business is a department within RISD that helps industry, educational institutions and government entities set up and manage collaborative design research projects with RISD students, faculty and alumni.

Center for Women & Enterprise
http://www.cweonline.org/
Center for Women & Enterprise's mission is to empower women to become economically self-sufficient and prosperous through entrepreneurship. They offer education, training, technical assistance, women’s business enterprise certification and access to both debt and equity capital to entrepreneurs at every stage of business development. 

Creative Capital
http://creative-capital.org
In 2003, Creative Capital launched the Professional Development Program (PDP) to share with a broad community of artists some of the tools and strategies for improved self-sufficiency that were developed initially for grantees. Since the launch of the program, PDP has refined and developed these tools and methodologies and, as of fall 2009, has served over 2,200 artists in more than 35 communities around the country. PDP offers a menu of weekend, one day, and evening length workshops.

Culture Count
http://www.culturecount.org/
Add your cultural enterprise – nonprofit or for-profit, individual or organization - to the more than 30,023 listings in CultureCount, New England’s Cultural Database. Get visibility for your cultural enterprise, gain easy access to financial, grants and census data for your research or planning, participate in NEFA’s creative economy research, connect with others who care about culture.

RIEDC Small Business Services
http://www.everycompanycounts.com
EveryCompanyCounts.com provides a place where Rhode Island's small business community can learn from each other and grow their business by tapping into Rhode Island's collective knowledge through business resources, articles and publications, learning events and workshops.

Lawyers for the Arts (Rhode Island Bar Association)
http://www.ribar.com/public/lawyersarts.asp
If you are an artist and think you have a legal problem, the Rhode Island Bar Association’s Lawyers for the Arts Program may be able to direct you to an attorney with the expertise you need. (Information on the site is slightly out of date. The $25.00 referral fee has been eliminated.)

Matchbook
http://www.matchbook.org/
MatchBook.org is an online cultural marketplace that brings together New England's performing and teaching artists and the people and organizations who present them. This free website features an easy-to-search directory of artists, performance spaces and presenting organizations, designed to matchartists with presenters that bookthem.

Ocean State Lawyers for the Arts
http://www.artslaw.org/
The Rhode Island affiliate of a nationwide network of non-profit public service organizations dedicated to providing legal assistance to visual artists, actors, performers, theatre companies, museums, dance troupes, artists' groups and any other artists or arts organizations in need of help regarding contracts, copyrights, trademarks, tax-exempt status, collection of accounts and any other arts-related problems.

Providence Geeks
http://www.providencegeeks.org
The goal of Providence Geeks is to help Rhode Island's digital innovators connect, collaborate, and ultimately make the City-State and its geeks info-technology leaders. Topics of conversation will vary as they will at any gathering of geeks, but many of us will be talking about AJAX, Mashups, Startups, and Web Services.

RI SCORE
http://www.riscore.org/
We know what it takes to succeed in business: We have started businesses; bought and sold businesses, and hired and fired employees; we have been landlords and tenants, and even litigants in lawsuits. Our mission as volunteers is to share our cross-industry expertise to mentor the small companies of Rhode Island and surrounding region in the best practices of all facets of business management.

Rhode Island Small Business Development Centers
http://www.risbdc.org/
The mission of the RISBDC is to assist entrepreneurs to transform their business to increase their stability, profitability, efficiency, and capacity for present and future growth.

Rhode Island Business Plan Competition
http://www.ri-bizplan.com/matriarch/default.asp
The Rhode Island Business Plan Competition, open to everyone, seeks to promote entrepreneurship and development of start-up and early stage companies.

Rhode Island Minority Business Enterprise Compliance Office
http://www.mbe.ri.gov/
MBECO promotes the development of certified minority (MBE) and women-owned (WBE) business enterprises. It does this by facilitating their participation in Rhode Island's business and economic development opportunities. MBECO offers services in certification, enforcement, business assistance and advocacy. 

SEED
http://www.seedcorp.com/
As a regional nonprofit economic development corporation, South Eastern Economic Development (SEED) Corporation focuses on job creation by financing all types of small businesses in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Tax Free Arts Districts
http://www.arts.ri.gov/special/districts/
The Rhode Island General Assembly passed legislation to provide tax incentives for gallery spaces and artists to live and work in specific areas, or "districts", in (currently) nine Rhode Island communities. Those communities are Providence, Pawtucket, Westerly, Woonsocket, Tiverton, Little Compton, Newport, Warwick and Warren.

United States Small Business Association of Rhode Island
http://www.sba.gov/localresources/district/ri/index.html
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) was created in 1953 as an independent agency of the federal government to aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns, to preserve free competitive enterprise and to maintain and strengthen the overall economy of our nation.