About SBG
The Small Business Grant (SBG) program management office was established, in 2002, as a part of the President’s Management Agenda. Managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, Grants.gov is an E-Government initiative operating under the governance of the Office of Management and Budget.
Under the President’s Management Agenda, the office was chartered to deliver a system that provides a centralized location for grant seekers to find and apply for federal funding opportunities. Today, the Grants.gov system houses information on over 1,000 grant programs and vets grant applications for federal grant-making agencies.
Mission and Vision
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.
Although the SBA has grown and evolved in the years since it was established, the bottom line mission remains the same. The SBA helps Americans start, build, and grow businesses.
Grant Program Highlights
The Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) is a highly-competitive program that encourages small business to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization.
By including qualified small businesses in the nation’s R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs. SBIR targets the entrepreneurial sector because that is where most innovation and innovators thrive. However, the risk and expense of conducting serious R&D efforts are often beyond the means of many small businesses.
By reserving a specific percentage of federal R&D funds for small business, SBIR protects the small business and enables it to compete on the same level as larger businesses. SBIR funds the critical startup and development stages and it encourages the commercialization of the technology, product, or service, which, in turn, stimulates the U.S. economy.
Benefits of Using SBA
Using the SBG system makes it faster, easier and more cost effective for grant applicants to electronically interact with SBG grant-making agencies. It also provides the following key benefits, among many others, to the grant community.
Helping the grant community learn more about available opportunities.
- Centralizing more than 1,000 different grant programs across federal grant-making agencies awarding more than $500 billion annually.
- Standardizing grant information, application packages and processes for finding and applying for SBG grants.
Facilitating interaction with the federal government.
- Streamlining the SBG grants process by eliminating the need to navigate complex processes to find and apply for SBG grants.
- Registering once to apply to as many federal agencies and grant programs as needed with just one secure login.
Simplifying the grant application process to save applicants costs, time and hassle.
- Eliminating the need to expend resources, time, postage and reproduction costs associated with traditional paper-based grant applications.
- Reducing training costs related to learning several different grant application systems and processes.
Making it easier to research and find SBG grant opportunities.
- Conducting grant opportunity research with improved search capabilities from a simple key word search to advanced searches over numerous grant opportunity categories, including agency and grant category.
- Having grant opportunities sent directly to grant applicant desktops through custom search profiles, potential applicants can be notified via email or RSS feeds of future grant opportunities as they are posted by federal agencies.
Making electronic grant application processing easier.
- Simplifying the grant application process and reducing paperwork.
- Increasing the ease-of-use through enhanced features common to the Web, such as downloaded and fillable forms, auto-populated data, error checks and email notifications.
- Facilitating applicant use of electronic grant applications by providing built-in data quality checks, online support functionality and a dedicated customer support team to help complete and submit applications.
Providing a secure and reliable source to apply for SBG grants.
- Validating grant applicants via a five-step registration process.
- Allowing completion and uploading of grant applications by authenticated and authorized users.
- Ensuring website stability and security thought Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt transactional data and communications over the Internet.
- Monitoring network traffic to identify unauthorized usage.
HOW WE CAN HELP YOU
We provide a platform for federal agencies to post discretionary funding opportunities and for grantees to find and apply to them.