By Ann Sullivan
In the early days of WIPP when advocacy for women business owners was relatively new, we routinely issued action alerts to foster the engagement of our members with their Congressional delegation. WIPP’s network generated thousands of phone calls, letters, signatures and engagement of organizations who supported our efforts to put a women’s procurement program in place. This was the cornerstone of our advocacy to encourage federal agencies to contract with women-owned firms. By giving agencies the ability to restrict contracts to women, we also encouraged women to enter the federal market. Through WIPP’s advocacy, the ability to sole source contracts through this program was enacted in 2015.
Fast forward to today. When you see the list of eight contracting items contained in the Senate version of its reauthorization draft below, it is hard to believe the difference in attitudes toward women-owned firms. The Senate Small Business Committee is poised to open up access to capital for WOSB/EDWOSB federal contracting firms and make the WOSB program comparable to other SBA procurement programs, including lifting restrictions and dollar amounts that hamper contracting officers from issuing sole source awards to women.
The other changes are just as important as the contracting changes. And all of this good work is coming to the small business community– maybe. The Senate Small Business Committee has been working this year to reimagine and reinvigorate programs at the Small Business Administration (SBA) through a reauthorization bill. WIPP’s policy team has been at the forefront of these efforts – providing hearing witnesses, collaborating though meetings and soliciting feedback from WIPP members on a slew of issues that are important to women business owners.
The House Small Business Committee is also in the throes of holding hearings and will most likely pass individual bills making changes in SBA programs, rather than compiling a comprehensive bill.
This is where you come in. We need to raise our voices once more in significant numbers. Our partners and our members need to communicate to their Congressional delegation the importance of this bill moving forward. There isn’t a bill number—not yet. When referencing these actions, just refer to them as the Senate SBA reauthorization draft.
Below are the changes worth fighting for:
Contracting
1. Raises sole source thresholds to $8 million generally and at $10 million for manufacturing contracts.
2. Allows sole source contracts for each option year instead of the current one-time award.
3. Amendment to eliminate the rule of two language for sole source contracts from the WOSB, HUBZone, and SDVOSB programs.
4. Solidifies Small Business Runway Extension Act, allowing for 5-year average of gross receipts for revenue based NAICS codes and adds employee based NAICS codes to the calculation by allowing them to also use a 5-year average for the purposes of size determination.
5. Requires agencies to pay small business contractors for work performed within 15 days of performance.
6. Requires the SBA to commission an independent external study to determine which industries are underrepresented by women.
7. Allows for equity investment in women and minority owned small businesses for federal contractors by women-owned/minority-owned equity firms.
8. Adds the SBA as a member of the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council.
Access to Capital
9. Eliminates a rule that prevents SBA from distributing more than 1/55th of its microloans in any one state.
10. Requires much needed data on microloans, of which women are the largest consumers.
Regulatory
11. Expands the role of the SBA Office of Advocacy to weigh in on regulations affecting small businesses.
12. Requires a five-year review of regulations’ effect on small businesses.
13. Allows the Office of Advocacy to write a letter questioning an agency’s certification that a proposed rule would not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities, and asking the agency to reconsider.
Cybersecurity
14. Mandates that the SBA Administrator establish a program to designate employees of lead SBDCs as certified to provide cyber strategy assistance to small businesses.
15. Directs the SBA to develop a cybersecurity clearinghouse that consolidates federal government cybersecurity information specifically for small business assistance.
