Federal Agencies
The 1982 Small Business Innovation Development Act (P.L. 97-219, reauthorized in 1992) required federal agencies completing annual extramural research over $100 million to allocate a percentage exclusively for small businesses. The allocation began in 1982 at 0.2% and is currently 2.5% with over $1 billion annually available to small businesses.
Awards are highly competitive, merit based, and require that a small business excel in all aspects of competition. The funded small business suffers no equity loss and retains most project generated intellectual property rights, the only penalty being governmental exclusion. SBIR funds represent small business capital. They are grants or contracts that do not require repayment, but do have specific required deliverables. SBIR is a structured 3-phase program with government funding the first two, feasibility (Phase 1) and prototype development (Phase 2). The third phase is commercialization of the developed prototype and is not federally SBIR funded.
Ten federal agencies have extramural R&D funding amounts large enough to warrant SBIR programs. Each agency develops a research topic list that matches the agency's mission and R&D operations interest. Topics are organized into solicitations and published periodically. Some agencies publish solicitations and deadlines yearly, while some do so more frequently. Solicitations are mailed to requesting parties and are posted on each agency's SBIR web site.
The following is a list of links of Federal Government Agencies working with SBIR/STTR agencies and the public. Click on the link to see each agency's web site for more information.
Links
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SBIR Agencies |
SBIR & STTR Agencies |
