SBA awards funding for veteran business outreach centers at Whitman, SUNY

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University (SU) will use a federal grant award to establish a veteran business-outreach center (VBOC).

In addition, the Research Foundation for the State University of New York (SUNY) will use additional federal funding for SUNY’s VBOC.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced the grant funding in a news release issued Tuesday.

The SBA awarded a total of $3.8 million for 14 VBOCs nationwide, the agency said. It did not specify the award amounts to individual schools.

The funding will enable each VBOC to counsel, train, and provide assistance, business assessment, and mentoring to veteran and service-disabled veteran entrepreneurs, according to the release.

In addition, the VBOCs will provide services for reserve component, National Guard, and “transitioning” service members interested in starting or expanding a small business.

The nationwide VBOC competition was open to all eligible institutions of higher learning, private organizations or businesses, veterans’ nonprofit community-based organizations, state, local or tribal governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations.

Each award covers a base project period of 12 months, with up to two renewal-option periods of 12 months each, the SBA said.

 VBOCs play a “significant” role in the veteran community, Barbara Carson, acting associate administrator of the SBA’s office of veteran-business development (OVBD), said in the release.

“We look forward to working closely with these centers to provide resources to enhance entrepreneurship opportunities for veterans as they continue to serve our country by contributing to the local economy and creating jobs in their communities,” said Carson.

VBOCs support “transitioning” service members as they embark on post-military service careers that often include small-business ownership and other forms of self-employment. The centers will use a portion of the funding to cover costs associated with coordinating, delivering, and conducting outreach to increase participation in the entrepreneurship track of the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) Transition Assistance Program, known as Boots to Business, on military installations in the continental U.S. and its territories.

The Small Business Act directs the VBOCs to participate in the DOD’s Transition Assistance Program.

Initiated as a pilot in 2012 and expanded nationally in 2013, Boots to Business leverages SBA resource partners including VBOCs, Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), Women’s Business Centers (WBC), SCORE, and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University to deliver entrepreneurship education and training.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com