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Whitman School announces $330K SBA grant award for veterans business training

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University (SU) announced it will receive federal grant funding of about $330,000 for the first year of its newly established veterans business outreach center (VBOC).

The Whitman School’s Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship will use that funding to provide counseling, training, assistance, business assessment, and mentoring to veteran and service-disabled veteran entrepreneurs.

The VBOC will also help reserve, National Guard, and transitioning service members who are interested in starting or expanding a small business.

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The Whitman School announced the grant award in a news release issued Wednesday.

The SBA first announced on April 15 that it had awarded a total of $3.8 million for 14 VBOCs nationwide. At the time, it did not specify the award amounts to individual schools.

The VBOC is a “tremendous opportunity” to expand SU’s service to veterans, Terry Brown, executive director of Whitman’s Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship, said in the Whitman news release.

“A key responsibility of Whitman’s VBOC is to support transitioning service members as they embark on post military-service careers that often include small-business ownership and other forms of self-employment. We’re proud to be able to offer the valuable support our veterans need to be successful,” said Brown.

A portion of the funding covers 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 (TAP), 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 program in 2012 and expanded nationally in 2013, Boots to Business leverages SBA partners including VBOCs, Small Business Development Centers (SBDC), Women’s Business Centers (WBC), SCORE, and SU’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families to deliver entrepreneurship education and training, the agency said in its release.

 

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com

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