SBA awards $5.3 million to five organizations to build statewide women's business center networks
The Small Business Administration named the recipients on Oct. 2: lead centers in Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia that will coordinate local service centers for women entrepreneurs. Three places that were open to the competition have no recipient listed.
Washington. Five organizations will set up statewide networks for women starting and growing businesses, under grants totaling $5.3 million that the U.S. Small Business Administration announced on Oct. 2. They are the first awards of the agency's new Women's Business Center Modernization Initiative.
Women's Business Center Modernization awards, by state
Each recipient becomes a State Lead Center: a statewide hub that works with local Service Centers to bring counseling, training and technical assistance to women entrepreneurs. The agency said the model is meant to reduce fragmentation and improve coordination in states where Women's Business Center funding has not kept pace with the number of women entrepreneurs.
Who received the grants
In Texas, the Better Business Bureau Education Foundation, the nonprofit arm of BBB Heart of Texas, has a proposed budget of $2,084,765. In Florida, the weVENTURE Women's Business Center at Florida Tech, run by the Florida Institute of Technology, has $1,540,617. Women's Business Enterprise Center East in Pennsylvania has $930,077, and Proof Programs in Tennessee has $494,329 to reach women entrepreneurs in all 95 of the state's counties. In West Virginia, the Economic and Community Development Institute has $250,000 to serve rural and underserved areas, where limited broadband and scattered population centers make starting a business harder, the agency said.
Each amount is the most the agency offered for that state when it opened the competition on July 21. That competition, for $6 million, was limited to organizations with active 501(c) tax exemption in eight places: the five above, plus Louisiana, Wyoming and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The October list names no recipient in those three. Tennessee and West Virginia had no Women's Business Center before, according to the July release.
Existing centers keep their funding
The initiative stands apart from the agency's 138 existing Women's Business Centers, which keep their 2026 base awards under their current cooperative agreements. In the five states, the new lead center grants come on top of that funding. The agency said the awards come from statutorily obligated funds.
“Through coordinated statewide networks, these awards will bring counseling, training, and access to capital closer to the women starting businesses, creating jobs, and strengthening their communities.”
The awards drew wider notice on Oct. 20, when the trade site Small Business Trends reported them.
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