By Bob Bouyea
Executive Editor

One dark, foggy night while a U.S. destroyer was on patrol off the eastern seaboard, an admiral was on deck and noticed that his ship appeared to be on a head-on course with another vessel.

The admiral telegraphed ahead and asked the other vessel to change course 15 degrees.

The message came back saying he should change his course 15 degrees. The admiral telegraphed back saying “This is urgent, change your course 15 degrees.” Again the response was “You need to change your course 15 degrees.”

This enraged the admiral, so he telegraphed again and said “I am the admiral of a U.S. destroyer and order you to change course 15 degrees.”

The return message read “I am a first mate of a lighthouse, and I suggest you change your course.”

I am reminded of this story as I see what’s happening with the S.C. World Trade Center. It is facing down that lighthouse, in this case the state Legislature, and must change its course if it is to survive.

After several years of the trade center’s receiving state funding to operate its programs, the Legislature is about to turn off the tap. Now the trade center, which has been operating in the Lowcountry for the last 20 years, will need to stand on. And if it does, it will only become a stronger organization. But it has its work cut out for it considering that it will be losing roughly half of its revenues.

The trade center has received $297,688 each year for the past three years from the state. Of that $197,688 is earmarked for the World Trade Park and Education Research Center, and $100,000 was given to the center for operational use.

But the financial state of South Carolina has changed and legislators are charged with trimming millions of dollars from programs that they deem non-essential. Unless there is an 11th-hour move to restore the money to the budget, that $297,688 will be cut.

The loss of these funds will devastate the trade center, and the continuation of its services and jobs are in jeopardy.

This is not the first time the money has been cut from the budget. In past budgets, Gov. Mark Sanford has removed the money from the budget using his veto. However, the Legislature, or, more accurately, Lowcountry Sens. Glenn McConnell, Chip Campsen and Robert Ford, restored the money. This year that’s not likely to happen.

A ‘fiscal reality’

Campsen said the cutting of the funds was not an erosion of support for the trade center but rather a “fiscal reality.”

The reality to the trade center is that it now has to function on its own. It needs to generate income through growing its membership and fundraising like many other nonprofit organizations.

And it hasn’t been successful in the recent past; this last fiscal year the trade center started off with a deficit of $22,000.

Fundraising is where the trade center’s problems have been in the past years.

This, coupled with the organization’s search for its fourth executive director in the last year, does not bode well for turning around its fundraising efforts anytime soon.

For years, Sanford has said he doesn’t think the state should be in the business of funding one nonprofit over another, but if it does, the funding should be based on merit. And considering that he has struck the money from the budget several years in a row, he must not see much merit in the S.C. World Trade Center.

The mission

The trade center’s mission is to promote and support international commerce through education, networking, trade development services and business opportunities for companies and individuals throughout South Carolina.

It’s a noble mission, especially when you consider the World Trade Center Association’s (the association which the SCWTC is a member) ideal of promoting peace through trade.

To achieve this, one thing the center does is hold trade missions to other countries where it matches up South Carolina companies with companies in those countries. It also hosts trade missions where delegations from other countries visit South Carolina.

However, there are other organizations in the state doing similar work, namely, the S.C. Department of Commerce. The Commerce Department also holds mission trips and visitations. It also promotes the state and its businesses and takes it a step further in that it also is recruiting businesses to relocate here.

There is also the S.C. Chamber of Commerce, which is the unified voice of the business community that works to enhance state businesses’ competitiveness in the global marketplace, among other things.

Then there are the seven development alliances and the numerous county-level economic development offices across the state that market and recruit businesses to their respective regions.

So with all this activity and efforts put forth by these other agencies, is the S.C. World Trade Center needed?

The one aspect that the trade center offers that the others don’t is in education, from

providing an interactive multimedia course to high schoolers, which schools purchase from the trade center, to providing companies with the tools they will need to enter a foreign market.

Changing course

If the trade center is to survive it will need to boldly change course to align its finances.

Namely, it will have to severely cut staff and some of its services. It must immediately hire an executive director who is a strong fundraiser. And it must grow its membership from the 250 it currently has statewide.

And if all this aligns, maybe the organization can stay afloat, but if not, then the trade center has probably outlived its usefulness. And that would be sad because there are a lot of good people who give tirelessly of their time and energy to make the trade center viable and important to the state’s economy and businesses.

But it takes more than that. It also takes money, something that is becoming harder to come by in this weakened economy.

By recognizing problems ahead  will help the trade center make the proper course correction

away from the rocks.

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