A Primer on Federal Funding for Entrepreneur Support Organizations

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Hey, everyone. Welcome back to our second annual SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. As a reminder, if you would like to participate in the conversation right here.

There are several ways to do so.

Number one, you can utilize the chat feature right here in Hoppin to chat with other ecosystem builders like yourself. There are two chats. There's an event chat and a stage chat. Come on over. Come on to the stage chat. That's where we're all conversing with each other and we're having a lot of fun in the chat.

I see y'.

All.

I see everybody in the chat. Also, number two, you can participate in the conversation on social media by using the hashtag. Hashtag is my hashtag symbol. ESO Summit 22. I said that really slowly. ESO Summit 22. All right. Leading our next panel, it is my privilege and pleasure to bring back to the virtual stage my co host, Director of Ecosystem Development, Jennifer Sheen.

I love Jamila's interest. Definitely the best hype woman there. Hello and welcome back. I'm so excited to welcome all of you to this primer on federal funding for entrepreneur support organizations. So you've heard about the Small Business Administration, and hopefully many of you already know about the programs and funding that SBA has that really form a core of support for Americans who want to start, grow, and build resilient businesses across the country, like the Small Business Development Centers. I know I saw a number of you there in the chat as well. Women's business centers. We know we have some of those here, too. And Veterans Business Outreach Centers. I'll bet there's a lot of score mentors out there in our community here, as well as some community navigators. So those are all SBA resource partners that hopefully you know in your community as well, and you're going to get to hear more about and from some of SBA's awardees that are focused more on companies in the innovation and research and development space throughout this summit, like our federal and state technology partners, as well as growth accelerators and SBIR catalysts. It might be actually more appropriate to call this panel a sampler rather than a primer, because there are many federal agencies and programs that we don't have represented here. And you can find last year's recording with presenters from the U.S. department of Agriculture, Rural Development, as well as the National Science Foundation. And I would certainly be remiss if I didn't mention the National Institute of Standards and Technology or nist, who manages the Manufacturing USA and Manufacturing Extension Partnership programs. And I'm sure again There must be many of you here hopefully joining us today, but I am thrilled to be introducing our panelists today where you'll get a little sampler of some of the federal programs that support entrepreneur support organizations like yourselves. First up, I'll introduce Amanda Koski, a management and program analyst in the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Economic Development Administration, or EDA, in the US Department of Commerce. She has a history of supporting and managing national workforce development initiatives and grants as well as experience working at startups. Victor Kane is the Commercialization Programs Team Lead in the Office of Technology transitions for the U.S. department of Energy, working across DOE's program offices and national labs to develop and manage external funding programs and activities like the Technology Commercialization Fund, the Energy I Corps, the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters, EPIC, and other technology agnostic programs that seek to bring impactful energy technologies to market. I'm also going to introduce our third panelist who you know, as people who work with entrepreneurs, we often have to be innovators ourselves, right? And just roll with the punches. So Joanne Hill isn't here yet, but she's going to be joining us. And Joanne serves as the Chief of the Office of Business Development for the Minority Business Development Agency, or MBDA in the US Department of Commerce. And she leads the nationwide network of MBDA Business centers as well as programs and initiatives that support the growth and global competitiveness of women and minority owned businesses in the areas of contracts, financing, domestic and global supply chains. So hopefully she joins us, you know, after we hear from our fellow panelists about their agencies. But I just want to make sure for everybody here today, all everybody in the audience, our goal is for you to leave hearing from this panel, learning about opportunities for your organization and maybe an agency or two that you can find funding that either you can apply to or potential partners that can they're already funded and that you might want to collaborate with. So I know there are a number of awardees in attendance today and I encourage those of you who've been funded to share your experiences in the chat. And if there are agencies or programs you want to highlight that I didn't mentioned, please put that into and I want to also note that since this is a quick panel, there will be opportunity for more question and answer and discussion with our panelists during the Further Discovery breakout session where we'll also have Brittany Sickler join us. She's the Networks Program Manager at eda and leads EDA's networks programs, including Communities of Practice, including one that you may be very interested in the technology based economic development community of practice, as well as a new economic recovery core. Okay, so into the quick pitches. Why would an entrepreneurship ecosystem builder want to know about your agency? So tell us a little bit about your agency's mission, your focus within it, and then key funding available for entrepreneur support organizations. I'm going to start with Amanda, because I think a lot of people probably know about the programs that your office has.

Thank you, Jennifer. So when I typically describe what EDA does, my kind of go to line is we're in the business of building ecosystems, and our office in the Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship specifically focuses on those support organizations that are looking to implement tech based economic development strategies for their region. And we have a very broad definition of region, so we have a lot of flexibility in how we look at what a community is and what a region looks like. Although I'll be talking primarily today about the work out of our office, the Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship, I would be remiss if I didn't note that EDA also has many other grant opportunities, particularly in our regional offices across the country, that could also support your community and efforts to support entrepreneurs. But in particular, our office currently has two primary programs that are supporting these efforts. The first is the Stem Talent Challenge and the second is the Build to Scale program, which hopefully many of you are familiar with. While neither of these programs can fund can directly fund entrepreneurs or startups or small businesses directly, what we do fund are those intermediary organizations like incubators, accelerators, networking groups, training providers who will be able to provide technical assistance to the entrepreneurs directly. So the first program, as I noted, was the Stem Talent Challenge, which really focuses on supporting workforce development programs to address the staffing shortage we often see in tech based fields. And our second program, which I'll probably talk a bit more about today, is the Build the Scale program, which is an annual competition that promotes commercialization efforts through two different challenges, the Venture Challenge and the Capital Challenge. Both competitions have varying funding levels to meet communities where they are. The Venture Challenge is really focused on providing support to entrepreneurs through TBED and commercialization strategies, while the Capital Challenge is really focused on addressing challenges with access to capital and helping your community overcome those challenges. So that's my. Hopefully I kept it under three minutes, but that's my quick little sampler what we'll be diving into later today. Thanks, Jennifer, that's great.

Thank you so much, Amanda. All right, Victor, so now you know, Department of Energy, of course. Let's hear the quick pitch about entrepreneurship ecosystem building from doe?

Yeah, I think when a lot of people think about the Department of Energy, they just sort of think about us doing research and development. And that has historically been true. We have not had a large effort to work with esos, but we have been working to change that, especially over the last few years and have a number of programs I think these type of organizations could really benefit from. And also if they get involved, they could really help the DOE accomplish a lot of the difficult challenges we are facing. Doe's mission is to ensure American security and prosperity through its energy, environment and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions. That's the high level. But then OTT was recently created around 2015, the Office of Technology Transitions. That's where I work to try and broaden the actual public impact of the DOE's research. A lot of this research wasn't reaching the market market and still is not. And so an office was created to try and change that. There are also several pockets of effort around the DOE working on things like this, but our programs specifically do fund organizations like this. The most important one is the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters. We actually, I think about an hour ago just, just announced 24 new prize awards in that space where hopefully we'll have some time to talk about. Today, DOE is, is leaning into prize authority and utilizing prizes to try and help provide quick amounts of funding to test new ideas and then being able to double and triple down on those ideas that are working. And the benefits of prizes are it's a check. There's no cost in accounting. There's, there's a very light application. You're competing and you're rewarded based on your performance. So there's a lot going on there that I think these organizations can, can help with. The other thing regarding prizes is we started this American Made Challenges and American Made Network and that's specifically built for these organizations. If you just, you know, do a search for American Made Network, you can go in that is DOE's network to engage with these organizations. You can sign up in just a few minutes and then you'll, you'll get the newsletter that will allow you to see everything that's going on in the space and all the opportunities. And then the last small thing I'll mention is DOE is learning from its peer organizations. Specifically, a lot of the defense organizations utilize something called partnership Intermediary agreements. And just last week, DOE announced an opportunity called a broad agency Announcement for searching for what will be doe's partnership intermediary that will allow us to work much more effectively with these type of organizations, move faster, adapt as the world changes and really work quickly to try and do new things. So I encourage people to look at that and share it with those that might be interested. So I could go on and on. But that's just a little bit of a flavor of what we do in DOE and excited to talk about it more.

That is really exciting. Amanda, I hope that you will also talk a little bit about some of the broader efforts across eda. I think Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship, you have an obvious priority around the innovation and entrepreneurship space that's very relevant to this community. I'm wondering if you might talk a little bit about how the agency as a whole is thinking about or prioritizing, you know, organizations in this space. Right. And kind of more technology based economic developments and kind of the key, you know, science funding obviously that, that we think about with DOE economic development maybe we wouldn't normally necessarily think as immediately about.

Yeah, great point, Jennifer. So we at eda, I, as I talked about, as I mentioned earlier, and you'll kind of hear me repeat it, I like to say we're in the business of building ecosystem. So that looks like a number of different things in terms of our priorities. So EDA does announce our investment priorities for the year and this year for the first time, TBED is actually on our list of top priorities. So I would say overall EDA is looking for different ways to implement TBED strategies and support entrepreneurs in various methods across all of our programs because that was made a agency wide priority for us in terms of other programs. At eda we have a number of programs that can focus on construction, can focus on planning, can focus on community organization. We oie primarily focus on programmatic grants, but we also have networks, communities of practice really focused on how do we address the whole ecosystem that's going to support. EDA is part of the Department of Commerce. So at the end of the day our goal is really to support businesses and support those communities as a way to, you know, offer a way for people in those communities to really prosper and continue to grow. So oie in our, in our office and designing programs, we really want to think about meeting communities where they are. So whether you're a small community who's kind of new, newer to establishing a tech based ecosystem, or you're a community who's been doing this for decades and really has a strong hold on all the community assets and what is needed. You know, our programs are trying to make sure that we're opening up those Opportunities. And we really believe that economic development is local and planning is local. So we have regional offices all across the country and we have people who are really the boots on the ground. I'm based in dc, but I would say the large majority of our agency is actually out in the field in your community, trying to help work through some of the planning and thinking through strategically, not just what does your company need, but what are the support systems that your company might need or the companies in your area might need. And how can we continue to build on that infrastructure in various ways, whether it be, you know, physical infrastructure or technical skill sets or subject matter expertise. We have really quite a range of funding that we offer in terms of building up a community to best support businesses in that area.

Actually, you know, building off maybe a little bit of that conversation around infrastructure. Victor, I'm curious how Department of Energy or maybe even specifically Office of Technology Transitions thinks about sort of that collaborative infrastructure or the infrastructure around the country in how you think about the partnering aspect with esos, because I know you mentioned the American Made Network and that's amazing. So how do you think about or facilitate these efforts?

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. There's actually several laws that pass that really change the game on how do we can work with these type of organizations. The first one was the Energy act of 2020. Very exciting read. If you go to Division Z, you can see ott's actual full blown authorization mission statement and all of that. And a big part of that is working with the ESO community to try and help the Department make impactful connections. So The Energy Act 2020 really helped move the needle for DOE and establish OTT as the place to go. If you're an ESO and you want to sort of understand what's going on in DOE and where the opportunities are. That's a big part of why OTT exists. The other one was the CHIPS act, which was all around silicon manufacturing. However, it did include the foundation for Energy Security and Innovation, an authorization for a new DOE foundation. It'd be a separate organization, not DOE specific. It wouldn't be employed by DOE staff. It would be a partner organization specifically created to help DOE partner in a, in a much more streamlined way. So we're excited to see that authorization are in our, you know, in the midst of trying to work through exactly how to get that going. And then the last one is the infrastructure, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided, I think roughly $62 billion to DOE. That's across many different Efforts all around trying to demonstrate and deploy various technologies. However, it is a. There is another item in the Energy act called the Technology Commercialization Fund which is applicable to the infrastructure law. And that basically provided 100, about $60 million a year or 120 if you had the last two years around technology commercialization efforts. And we're actively developing multiple programs to large programs to work with these various organizations and help us deploy more of these critical energy infrastructure technologies. And then the last thing I'll say is hopefully we'll have a chance to talk more about the national labs. They are a critical part of DOE's tool set to accomplish its mission and they're an incredible resource to technology innovators, but not always the first group you would think to go to. So DOE is working on efforts around what are called vouchers where DOE will actually fund the work at the lab to help streamline the process of startups working with our national labs. And then I didn't get to talk about the American made network and challenges, but I think I'll cover that maybe in another question.

Yeah, no, I mean there's so much and actually, you know, it's great that you brought up all of these different authorities essentially as well as just how recent most of these things are. Right. And I think the audience probably may maybe if they've had to work with the federal government before, understands how slow some of the things that we do. But I think both EDA and Department of Energy, through a number of the recent, both the COVID relief bills and some of the really exciting, you know, the bipartisan infrastructure law and CHIPS and science, all of these different efforts of late have infused a lot more money into many of our organizations of late. And I think there is that real opportunity there for growing the programs and also matching it with the administration's focus and the executive order that was signed on day one on equity. And so I'm curious to hear a little bit about your how equity and inclusion plays a role in the programs and funding that your agencies are implementing. You know, either whether through again through partnerships or how you're thinking about these things. But with this very large infusions of funding, how are you thinking about making sure that the funding gets out beyond those who have always gotten it? And Victor, maybe I'll start with you this time.

Yeah, equity is critical and core to everything we're trying to do in ott. Again, our mission is to expand the public impact of the investments in technology research or energy related technology research. And so you're right. I've been at UE now for I think 12 years and in the early, earlier part of my career, you would actually see the same people, the actual same entities applying over and over and over again. And when you talk to others about why they didn't apply, they said the effort it takes to learn how to apply to your program is so hard that, that we don't even try. And those that do apply, consider it a critical skill set and just keep applying again and again because now they know how to do it. That's a, you know, not a great system that hopefully we can improve on. And we are doing that. There are several efforts in DOA specifically around streamlining and opening up the access to our programs by demystifying them, making them a little bit more straightforward. And the one I'm most excited about is prize authority. As I mentioned, it is the best tool that we have, I think at the DOE to engage with new first time applicants to the doe. You can structure your applications as little as five pages and you can dial in the appropriate amount of funding that will appropriately incentivize and help encourage the activities that you think will be impactful. And so one great example of this is the Inclusive Energy Innovation Prize which is going forward now. It had, I believe 80% of its applicants were brand new applicants and there were, there were hundreds of them that applied to do for the first time in this program. And you can go and look through those organizations, many of them may be here to see that we're actually able to reach these new communities with these authorities. So we really are trying. It is critical to what we're trying to do. And if entities look at our funding opportunities and choose not to apply, they should let us know why so we can actually learn how to do better. But yeah, we are definitely trying as hard as we can. And then the last thing is in our American made network, entities can be funded in what are called power connectors, where there's a direct contract to help us work on various challenges we have. And several of them are focused on VERSI equity inclusion. Others are focused on recruitment for our programs. Some actually help people understand the funding opportunities and consider how to apply to them and things like that. So that's another tool that DOE is using to try and do a better job.

Thanks, Victor. Amanda, how, how about EDA for broadly, how, how is the agency thinking about how to make sure that the large amounts of funding coming to focus on regional innovation ecosystems is equitable? Inclusive?

Yeah, yeah, thanks Jennifer. So I'M going to answer that, but I'm going to actually build off something Victor said first, then I'll come back to that. But I think one of the things you know, Victor was talking about was obviously trying to make applications themselves more accessible. And I do think that's something we've been trying to do. We're very open to feedback on as well. You know, in the last year we've really tried kind of co launching toolkits to help you really understand the NOFOs. I know they're long, I know they're wonky. Now there are a lot of legalese as we like to call it, and sometimes hard to kind of understand exactly what's going on there. So I know that's something I just want to make sure you say can you please always, always, always, always check our website? Because we've been posting a lot of resources and toolkits to just help with the application process and we have a lot of contacts who are willing to kind of, you know, answer questions, myself being one, and a system to really kind of provide that customer support. I know a lot of applicants are sometimes hesitant to reach out to the, you know, what sometimes feels like the black box of the government and not sure if they're talking to real person. So I think that's something we've really been putting a lot of effort into is to make our applications more accessible in that way and really help you through that process. So I just want to flag that first and foremost to make sure you're always checking out our website because we do update it very, very regularly as we get more questions and things like that about our application process.

And I'll take the opportunity to insert too, since Joanne isn't here yet. I do want to flag that MBDA Minority Business Development Agency also has a very full kind of portal for those who might be applying for MBDA or federal government grants for the first time. I can promise you that nobody on the program level really wants to make all our applications really hard and cumbersome. And so, you know, I describe it often as a combination of trying to think of innovative ways to streamline the application process like using grant or prizes the prize authority versus and changing the system in the long term of changing the actual grant applications, while also in the more short term helping people navigate that space. So providing all the technical assistance that was just describing as well.

Yeah, thanks. And I'll. I'll have some more links when I would have done speaking to throw in the chat as well. But I think From EDA standpoint, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we released earlier this year our EDA investment priorities and the number one investment priority for EDA is equity. So it's something we're taking very seriously. We're looking at and across all of our programs, in many of our funding opportunities, you'll find equity is even an evaluation criteria. And it's something we definitely take into consideration in our funding decisions. This also, and what the best advice I always give about addressing equity in an application or thinking through it is really to look at the assets in your community. You know, it may not just be the population you're serving or the people on your board. Those things are all important. But look at the diversity of the organizations. What are the partners in your community? If your organization is not already kind of looking at things through an equity equity lens, there's probably a partner in your community who has it down, who understands it and can help you engage and give you a helping hand. I know Victor talked earlier in the last question about partnering, and I think that's something to. I just try to encourage as much as possible in looking at your community and what assets your community needs is who are the partners who are either already doing it or may have a little bit more of a grip, hold on understanding what's there, and there's some great opportunities for alignment there. So really understanding your community and the assets in your region, I think will really help you address those kind of communal regional goals as well as you think through what innovation in your region can look like.

Yeah, I think that actually makes me think a lot about too, how we as federal agencies are trying to partner and expand our reach to those who don't already know us. It's always hard to do outreach with individuals we don't know because we're not connected to them. So if we knew them, then they would know about us.

Right.

So I know. You know, actually this event, one of the things that we're trying to do is grow the network and spread awareness around these efforts. Are there specific things or, you know, what would you suggest to those who are here today who are listening? How can they play a role in getting the needs of their communities into conversation with the federal agencies? I think both of you have touched on that and open the floor to whoever wants to jump in there.

I'll hop in. So I think something, and I'm not going to say it's unique to EDA because I'm sure there are other agencies who do this, but we actually have staff members whose entire job is to help you through an application process, as I was hinting at before. And we'll get links dropped for our contact page. But at eda we have a very specific role of a person called an economic development representative. And there's a person assigned to each state for your region who you can reach out to as your primary first point of contact to just help understand what are the opportunities at eda. And so really, like I said, we really support the notion that economic development and community planning should and is local. Which is why we have six regional offices around the country and we have those assigned EDRs, the Economic Development representatives, which you can contact and reach out to and just have an introduction conversation. You know, we want you to have a relationship with eda. It's a two way street. We want you to understand. So we've, we've dedicated, you know, a lot of resources to making sure that we have those channels of communication open. And I feel like a broken record, but I was going to say we really do update our website with kind of all of our latest funding priorities across the entire agency, not just our office. They're all listed in one place. We're a bit smaller of an agency than doe, so, you know, we may not have as many resources there, but just want to make sure that, you know, it is accessible as well. And then also if you're curious about last year's competition, particularly in the Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship, as I mentioned earlier, our Build the Skill program in particular, we have last year's resources and webinars still up there. We also post profiles of all of the winners from last year for all of our current grantees. You can search our website and find, you know, quick little blurbs about what those grantees are doing so you can kind of understand and get ideas for other work that other communities might be doing. I think it's a great resource to kind of dig through. And as you're thinking about what t bed strategy might we want to implement here in our community, you should, you know, look at what are some of the other communities doing as well. So I think that's a quick, great resource. I'll, I'll link one more resource as well which is do there in your community if you're not already connected to your local economic development district, what these are, they're very small kind of quasi governmental organizations that really focus on strategy for the region. So a lot of times they know, like I said, if you're not sure who to partner with, that's another great Resource to say, hey, we need help. Can you help us with this application? Or we need partners on this project in order to make it more substantial for the region. Who do you know? These are kind of organizations that are definitely available and have a mission to kind of help with that process. So I know that was a lot of acronyms, but I'll try to spell it out for you guys in the chat as well. And you guys can save those.

Thanks. And Victor, there's actually a question from the audience that's directed at you and I think actually does it kind of follows on the question or around some actions that those in the audience can take in connecting their communities with doe and I think especially the different DOE labs, because obviously the labs, national labs, are located in specific places, but they also have different industry or specific research area focus. Right. So there are some places that have really good connectivity with their labs, and that's probably because they're around them physically. But are there ways for those across the country really to connect in, especially if they have maybe a good industry or like, you know, skill set need that might be suited for a particular lab?

Yeah, I think one small, possibly good thing that came out of COVID was the, the fact that it really helped everybody work better when they weren't directly next to one another. And I think that's true with the labs as well. And I don't know that you'd necessarily have to be right next to a national lab to be able to partner with them. In fact, we, we very much don't want that to be the case. Obviously, we want all of our labs to be successful and tied into their regions however they want to partner as well. So one big one is there's a notice of intent, is what we call it at doe that we're about to launch our technology commercialization fund. You can look what we launched last year and see what that might look like this year. And that's roughly anywhere between 15 and $30 million funding opportunity to try and do a better job commercializing technologies by working with the national labs. So, and all you would need to do is look at that funding opportunity and identify the tech transfer officers at the various national labs and reach out and see if there's an opportunity to partner. So that's one big option of how to work directly with national labs, and then they are really open to trying new things. So I think it just takes that first step of engagement. And now having some funding programs to help with that is pretty important. I do have some other things I was writing down about, like, tips that, that might help. I don't know if that's directly related to the National Lab question.

Well, no, I mean, I think that's, that's what we're here for here is, you know, we've got a great audience here.

Yeah.

How can they connect?

So my advice is, like, at least at the doe, we desperately want to fund these organizations like we're creating. Just imagine the job. You're spending your whole job just trying to create a program that will help deploy these funds in a way that will maximize their impact and help the best organizations. You know, that's what we're doing. And at least a doe, the best way to think about this is just. Yeah, imagine you're us. Think about us sitting there writing these funding opportunities or no FOs, and why we're putting these various requirements in there, because we need them. And so we need you to follow, follow those details and directions and, and give us the information we need to then advocate for you. So there's someone sitting on the other side sort of advocating for the selection of you based on what you put in this application. So I don't think a lot of people think about it that way. They think about the government, sort of this black box, maybe it'll hit. But there's actually a human behind this whole machine trying to get you funding, and anything you can do to help them with the information they need is very important. And then the other things, at least with DOE funding, we really need things that are trying new ideas. We're trying to give you, you know, really relatively easy funding to try new things because we heard that that is a big barrier. So it's really blue skies activities for you. How. What is something you want to do and how can we help you do that? And then the other big thing that I think confuses people sometimes is like, fairness is critical. So often there are weird things when you engage with government where people won't, you know, engage with you. And that's because when there's an open funding call, you are not allowed to talk to anyone or hear their idea or give them any feedback, because that would be unfair. So I think, you know, that is also important to realize that it's not that we don't want to talk, it's that we want to make sure you weren't given an opportunity someone else had and vice versa. So maybe I'll stop there and see what the next question is.

Yeah, well, and then actually, you know, as we're. We're starting to wrap up this conversation, although just a reminder to everybody that we do have the breakout session later where it'll be a more open flow with the audience. And so that was actually perfect for my last question, which is going to be your last words of advice on how to think about working with your agency. And I just do want to add on just to that point exactly where, you know, if we're not communicating sometimes it's because if I, if, for example, I'll just speak for myself, if I don't feel that I have the bandwidth to answer everybody's question, then I will often just not. I don't want. We can't give anyone an unfair advantage. So then I will not answer any questions unless I can do it publicly.

Right.

So, Amanda, and that's also I will say why sometimes all these notices of funding opportunities are so long, we have to put in everything we possibly can. So Amanda, how about you last words of advice? When, when thinking about how to work with your agency, you know, what would you give tell somebody pursuing funding?

Yeah, so I think the first thing it is and I'll give a quick, a quick shout out. So we don't have the Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship, we don't have any programs open for funding right now, but we are expecting to launch our NOFO late winter, early spring. So mark your calendars. The first piece of advice, and I feel like I've said this earlier, is, you know, look at your community, understand your region, and understand your region's assets that already exist and how you can leverage them into a project, into a program. You know, ecosystems don't exist by themselves. You need partners. So I encourage you all, you know, before NoFos are launched, start talking to your partners. I just told you our next NOFOS coming out probably late winter, early spring. So you have a few months to start having those conversations, start getting people on board, start evaluating and figuring out what the problems, the challenges and the needs are in your community and work from there. And second is, you know, make sure you check out resources. We've linked a lot of things. I know it can be very, very overwhelmin in thinking about all the different links and all the different ways you can partner. So giving yourself time to kind of prepare and come up with good strategies and really understand where the problems lie that you can create a solution to. As Victor said, and I really like the way he said it, you know, I think our program as well has a good deal of flexibility. We're open to big ideas, we're Open to new ideas. I always make the joke that we wouldn't be the Office of Innovation Entrepreneurship if we weren't constantly trying to innovate ourselves. So I hope, you know, I always look forward to reading and seeing kind of what new innovative concepts are out there. So don't be afraid to, I guess, push the envelope a little bit.

Oh, definitely. Thank you so much. And I really hope that Joanne is all right. I want to put in a plug for the Minority Business Development Agency, though, and at least highlight the fact that one, just this past year they were formally authorized and also that they received $100 million in funding from the Department of Treasury to support access to and provide technical assistance to the state Small Business Credit Initiative, or SSBCI program. And so I think, you know, hopefully we're able to get Joanne over to our breakout session and again, hope she's an artist.

All right.

But while this panel focused on funding for entrepreneur support organizations, I also want to make sure that anybody listening here takes away from here that there are resources that are also beyond funding that can benefit the work that you're doing in support of entrepreneurs and the innovation ecosystem. So two in particular I just want to highlight, also beyond what we've talked about here are the resources of the US Patent and Trademark Office, uspto. And I believe we have some representatives who are attending, so hopefully they're throwing their links in the chat and also the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer, or flc. So the DOE National Labs are part of the FLC as well, but there are many other agencies that also have research and development laboratories across the nation that also have research facilities and scientists and expertise and intellectual property to license. So none of this would be possible without the amazing support from all of you. And thank you to our federal partners here. Love partnering with our fellow innovator innovators in the federal government as well as those out there in the non federal partners. So thanks.

Thank you. Jennifer, Victor and Amanda, Fantastic conversation. I see some of you in the chat are already giving our speakers a round of emoji applauses. Yes, that's what we do here. We applaud, we applaud our speakers. Shout out to the folks who are mingling with each other and participating in the chat. That's what this event is for. So let's continue finding commonalities and building those relationships. I love to see it. If you're just tuning in, welcome to the second annual SBA Innovation Ecosystem Summit. Thank you for being here. Say hi to us in the chat. If you're listening to our speakers and suddenly you have a light bulb moment. We want you to share that with us on social media by using the hashtag esosummit22 and also tagging us on Twitter at sbirgov. All right. We're going to be back in a moment to hear from Expert leaders in SBA's Innovation Ecosystem Network as they share essential information on America's seed fund based on firsthand experiences.

Stay tuned.