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Small Business News

Small Business News

News | March 22, 2024

Upcoming Notice of Funding Opportunity for APEX Accelerators Program

By Suzanne Zurn Office of Small Business Programs

Arlington, VA  –  

This is a special notice to provide information about the upcoming Notice of Funding Opportunity to establish APEX Accelerators in Fiscal Year 2025.

Award recipients must establish and maintain an APEX Accelerator with physical location(s) to serve as a resource for large and small businesses to obtain procurement technical assistance. Procurement technical assistance means professional, specialized assistance provided to clients that enables them to identify potential contractual opportunities and obtain or perform under contracts, innovation and technology grants, and other DoD-funded instruments, with DoD, other federal agencies, state and/or local governments, and with federal, state and/or local government contractors. Clients may include any business pursuing or performing these types of contracts or subcontracts at any tier. You must collaborate with DoD and other federal agencies and work cooperatively with them to accomplish the work under this award.

We expect to award 95 new cost sharing cooperative agreements with 5 one-year period of performance, totaling an estimated $750K to $1.5M; however, we are not obligated to make any awards and reserve the right to revise or cancel this special announcement.

The period of performance will begin around April 1, 2025 and conclude around March 31, 2026 for the first year. Applicants may include subrecipients/ subawards in their application and may propose direct and indirect costs.

Learn More>>

DoD Small Business News

OSBP and NIST Partner for Small Businesses

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Office of Small Business Programs (OSBP), the principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on small business matters, and  U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program (MEP) signed a memorandum of agreement on May 02, 2021 to collaborate on strengthening the national security of the small business industrial base.

The new partnership links two DOD organizations with a common mission to assist small businesses and  to achieve shared objectives:

  • Provide training and technical support to small-and-medium U.S. manufacturers engaged or planning to engage with the defense sector.
  • Promote and co-sponsor joint training events beneficial to national security, with an emphasis on cybersecurity for defense manufacturing.
  • Establish direct and consistent relationships at multiple organizational levels within both Parties to document and share complementary assistance best practices.  
  • Develop clear objectives, benchmarks and goals to measure success, added value, and synergy of collaborations between NIST MEP and OUSD(A&S) OSBP.

The OSBP and NIST partnership enables more DOD collaboration and support of small and medium manufacturers (SMMs). They will Collaborate to support the ongoing development and security of the Defense and Industrial Base.

This partnership will combine OSBP’s expertise in leveraging small businesses to close capability gaps for our armed forces with the MEP National Network.  The MEP operational base provides an opportunity for OUSD(A&S) OSBP to serve as a resource for the MEP Program of MEP Centers engages defense sector and defense-relevant manufacturing clients to promote and provide technologies, prototypes and products for National Security missions.