Teaching Women Entrepreneurs How to Win Federal Contracts

WASHINGTON—Government officials, women-small business owners, and advocacy groups celebrated the Small Business Administration's (SBA) newly created Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract Program in the Washington Metropolitan area that expands federal contracting opportunities for women-owned businesses. They gathered at the J.W. Marriott Hotel on 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue on March 2.

The WOSB Federal Contract Program helps ensure a level playing field in which women-owned small businesses can compete for Federal contracting opportunities.

Whether it actually will work remains to be seen but this was the intention of the SBA’s directive issued on Oct. 7, 2010. The program is intended to better position women-owned businesses to meet the government's 5% federal contracting goal, which is equal to roughly $27 billion of the federal government's total $536 billion spent on government contracting.

In an effort to help more women business owners get their fair share of federal contracting opportunities, the SBA introduced last year the Give Me 5 program government contracting curriculum to its network of 110 Women's Business Centers (WBCs) across the country.

“Launched in 2008 by Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) and American Express OPEN, the Give Me 5 program curriculum aims to educate women business owners and increase the number of government contracts awarded to women,” says the GiveMe5.com website.

WIPP describes itself as a national bi-partisan group comprising over half a million members. The non-profit organization lobbies on behalf of 45 national Women in Business groups. American Express OPEN says it is “the leading payment card issuer for small businesses in the United States and supports business owners with products and services to help them run and grow their businesses.”
At the Marriott conference, WIPP and American Express OPEN led the celebration.

According to GiveMe5.com, the Give Me 5 program has educated close to 400,000 women on federal contracting opportunities and helped more than 25,000 women business owners get their businesses on the Central Contractor Registration (CCR), the primary vendor database for the federal government.

"This is a huge victory for the women business owners' community," said Barbara Kasoff, President of WIPP.

"What we are celebrating today is the establishment of the program that increases the number of the industries that are able to participate in the 5% set aside for women business owners, and brings opportunities for about 680,000 women business owners to compete for these contracts that would be set aside for just for them. " said Karen-Michelle Mirko, Director of Customer Advocacy Marketing of American Express OPEN.

"We are hoping to get more government contracts," said Lorena Chambers, CEO of Chambers Lopez & Gaitan LLC, a Virginia based Hispanic Advertising Public Relations and Strategic Marketing business.

Ms. Chambers said they had been very fortunate because of demographic growth among Hispanic community. So, the last couple of years has been very good for them.

Jennifer Bisceglie opened her own business four years ago. The Give Me 5 program made her very excited. She said, "It gives women business owners another tool for their tool box, and access to the government we've never had before. This gives us just one more way to access contracts."

After eleven years of work, the Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contract Program is finally a reality. With $30 billion in contracts set aside specifically for women, this is an enormous opportunity.