September 15, 2022

(Washington, DC) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), a senior member of the Senate Committee on Little Small business and Entrepreneurship, currently joined Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD), Mazie Hirono (D-Hi), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) in introducing the Women’s Organization Centers Improvement Act of 2022 — legislation to reauthorize and improve the U.S. Tiny Small business Administration’s (SBA) Women’s Small business Center (WBC) Application. 

“Women small business owners and business people are at the coronary heart of ingenuity and financial growth across the Granite Condition. Making sure girls have access to assets, guidance and mentorship is key to leveling the participating in industry and empowering ladies to lead,” explained Senator Shaheen. “I’m very pleased to assistance introduce this bill to support Women’s Small business Facilities, which assistance place women of all ages at the helm of the small small business local community.” 

The Women’s Company Heart method is a nationwide network of a lot more than 140 facilities that present counseling, training, networking, workshops, complex guidance and mentoring to business people. WBCs guidance business people at all stages of the company enhancement method, including aid with composing a business enterprise program, conducting industry analysis, navigating the federal procurement process and other business administration and operations techniques. The application played a key role in the SBA’s assistance of compact businesses through the pandemic. WBCs served extra than 88,000 clients in 2021, which is a 36 per cent improve from the 64,000 customers served in 2019. 

The Women’s Organization Facilities Advancement Act of 2022 will give the SBA and WBCs the equipment important to meet the requires of a historic growth in new organization formation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Us residents registered 5.4 million new enterprises in 2021—the greatest complete on history and a practically 2 million boost from 2019 when there ended up 3.5 million new organization applications. 

The Women’s Organization Centers Advancement Act of 2022 will improve federal guidance to WBCs by doubling the maximum once-a-year grant award to $300,000. The bill also empowers the SBA administrator to offer greater overall flexibility to lesser, extra under-resourced WBCs. Beneath the bill, the SBA administrator might waive, in entire or in element, the nonfederal match prerequisite for a single yr based mostly on an investigation of the economic problems of the grant recipient, the shown capacity of the receiver to increase nonfederal cash, and the past effectiveness of the receiver. The bill also sets the duties of the WBCs and demands the SBA to build an accreditation software for WBCs. Moreover, the bill clarifies the duties of the SBA’s Office environment of Women’s Enterprise Ownership and codifies the office’s mission in statute among the other provisions. 

As a senior member of the Senate Committee on Little Enterprise and Entrepreneurship and as a previous smaller company owner, Senator Shaheen is a intense advocate for New Hampshire’s compact business enterprise local community. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Shaheen went to bat for small organization homeowners who had been among the the most severely impacted by the general public well being crisis. She worked to provide tiny corporations with the assets they needed to weather conditions and get well from the financial effects of the COVID-19, foremost negotiations on provisions in the Coronavirus Assist, Relief and Economic Stability (CARES) Act, which set up the Paycheck Security System (PPP) and expanded the Economic Harm Catastrophe Bank loan Plan, each of which ended up lifelines for corporations all over New Hampshire and the place. 

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