It started as a class project by a group of CSUS business students. The idea was simple enough, but scarcely heard of in 1969: a campus center to help entrepreneurs grow their small businesses.

"We were one of the few who were starting to do this," said marketing professor Dennis Tootelian, director of the Center for Small Business at California State University, Sacramento. "Small business wasn't that fashionable. It wasn't something people thought much about."

Forty years later, the Center for Small Business is a household name in the local business community and believed to be one of the largest and oldest of its type in the country.

Today, between 80 and 140 local companies get advice from the center each year, said Tootelian, who has been its director since 1973.

One of its local clients is Carvell Printing. When Carol Carvell's husband died in 2002, she worried whether she'd be able to continue the couple's Fulton Avenue printing business.

Her lender suggested she contact CSUS' business center.

"That was the start of the journey. They gave us the chance to sit down and talk about how we were doing business," said Carvel, who credits the center with helping keep her four-employee business alive.

She's consulted the center several times over the past seven years, getting advice and detailed reports on how to manage the print shop's operations.

"I'm still in business," she said. "I've got a great group of employees, and the support of (the center) has been very beneficial."

The center's services are free and open to any company that meets the SBA's definition of a small business. Generally, Tootelian said, that means a firm with fewer than 500 employees and less than $20 million in sales.

Each company in the program is assigned to a team of CSUS business students, primarily seniors and graduate students majoring in accounting, marketing, operations or information systems.

Working under a faculty member as part of a case-study class, the teams spend about 70 hours visiting the company's workplace, gathering information and producing detailed recommendations such areas as accounting and marketing.

The free services cover all aspects of operations except taxes, legal advice and loan packaging.

More than 70 businesses got help last semester, and there's a waiting list of 20 to 40 companies for the fall term, Tootelian said.

In the current weak economy, many small businesses seek advice on "how to hang on," said Tootelian, but the majority are successful companies that "just want help getting to the next level."

"This is an outstanding program in all ways," said Sanjay Varshney, dean of the CSUS College of Business Administration, in a statement marking the center's 40th anniversary. "It benefits the Sacramento economy significantly since small business is the driving economic force in this area."

In its early years, the center received federal funding to provide technical management services for fledgling businesses that received U.S. Small Business Administration loans.

When that funding dried up in the 1990s, the center turned to the private sector, and it now receives financial support from local banks and lenders including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Union Bank, Bank of the West and Resource Capital.

The center operates on $40,000 to $60,000 a year, primarily overhead for the campus office.

Calling it a "prototype" program, Jim O'Neal, SBA district director, said the center "was one of the only collaborative programs that recognized that students were a significant asset. (Students) have the ability to gain real-world experience and give businesses the expertise they wouldn't otherwise have had."

In recent years, the center's clients have diversified. "We're getting more women, more minority-owned businesses, more home-based businesses," Tootelian said.

And given the weak economy and state furloughs that have pinched incomes, the center is also getting more calls from those contemplating opening their own business, including state workers, Tootelian said.

"We're getting a lot of people who are getting displaced, who can't get jobs at the salary level they're accustomed to. Others are starting a business as a second source of income," Tootelian said.

He said the program's benefits go beyond providing local businesses with affordable assistance.

"It's also a big thing for students," Tootelian said. "When you do a case study out of a book, it's not personal. But this (program) is real people and the lives of real people."

For more information, call the center at (916) 278-7278, or visit www.cba.csus.edu. Click on "Institutes and Centers," then "Center for Small Business."

Call The Bee's Darrell Smith, (916) 321-1040.