The hurricanes and fires of 2017 and 2018 affected more than 47 million people in the U.S. From 2016-18, survivors received about $6 billion and 12,805 temporary housing units from FEMA's Individuals and Households Program. Most applicants were uninsured, and a majority had incomes under $50,000. About 2.4 million people (of the 4.4 million referred to the program) were ineligible. Common reasons...

Certain federal contracts that go to large businesses must have small business subcontracting plans. Under these plans, contractors have to make a good-faith effort to offer subcontracting opportunities to small businesses. Agencies are supposed to notify Small Business Administration representatives about proposed contracts with these plans for possible review. But for about half of the 26 contr...

The Small Business Administration (SBA) provides funding to Small Business Development Centers to train and counsel small businesses. Since FY 2016, SBA has used the President’s proposed budget to estimate funding for the following year. For FY 2020, the President requested $101 million; Congress appropriated $135 million. The large gap between estimated and actual funding caused the centers to...

Each year, we make more than 1,000 recommendations to help improve the federal government. We alert department heads to the recommendations where they can save the most money, address issues on our High Risk List, or significantly improve government operations. This report outlines our eight priority open recommendations for the Small Business Administration as of April 2020. For example, we rec...

For the English version of this page, see GAO-20-168. Examinamos cómo la Agencia Federal para el Desarrollo de la Pequeña Empresa (SBA, por sus siglas en inglés) planeó y respondió a los huracanes Harvey, Irma, y María en 2017, entre otras cosas. Después de los huracanes, la SBA aceptó cerca de 340,000 solicitudes de préstamo para desastres y aprobó cerca de 141,000, prestando más de...

Para la versión de esta página en español, ver a GAO-20-369. We reviewed how the Small Business Administration planned for and responded to Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017, among other things. After the hurricanes, SBA accepted about 340,000 disaster loan applications and approved about 141,000, making more than $7 billion in loans to help business owners, homeowners, renters, and...

The Small Business Administration works with many colleges and universities to provide entrepreneurial training on campuses. We looked into the extent to which SBA has worked with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to help people start, build, and expand businesses. We testified that SBA programs that foster entrepreneurship included, but haven't specifically targeted, these schools. We...

Each year, we make more than 1,000 recommendations to help improve the federal government. We alert department heads to the recommendations where they can save the most money, address issues on our High Risk List, or significantly improve government operations. This report outlines our 5 priority open recommendations for the Small Business Administration as of April 2019. For example, we recomme...

The Small Business Administration may partner with colleges and universities to foster entrepreneurship. For example, a campus can host a center, funded in part by SBA, that provides training and counseling to aspiring entrepreneurs. Since 1980, federal agencies, including SBA, have been directed to reach out to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to help raise awareness of their...

The Small Business Administration (SBA) designates economically distressed areas as Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZones), based on data such as unemployment and poverty rates. Since 2008, GAO has issued several products that identified weaknesses in the HUBZone program and made recommendations to SBA to address them. While weaknesses remain, SBA has taken some steps to enhance prog...