USAID hosted its third overseas small business conference this past November, in Bangkok, Thailand. The conference was coordinated by USAID’s Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization (OSDBU) with support from the Regional Development Mission for Asia (RDMA). More than 250 individuals, representing more than 100 businesses, participated in the event. The Asia Region Small Business Conference was the first in-person U.S. small business conference hosted since before the pandemic in 2020 in Frankfurt, Germany. USAID staff, U.S. small businesses, and representatives from other government agencies attended, ready to network, learn, and discuss topics covering all avenues of U.S. small business partnership.
Where Is USAID with U.S. Small Businesses?
At the conference in Bangkok, Kimberly Ball, Director of USAID’s OSDBU, announced that USAID achieved its overall FY 2023 small business goal of 13.25 percent. Not only did the Agency reach this goal, it exceeded it: USAID obligated a total of 14.64 percent of prime awards to small businesses in FY 2023. The Agency exceeded its socioeconomic goal for women-owned small businesses (WOSB) of 5 percent by achieving 5.62 percent. Ball acknowledged, however, that the Agency did not meet its small and disadvantaged business (SDB) goal, although it made strides by obligating more funding than in FY 2022. The Agency is still working toward achieving its service-disabled veteran-owned business (SDVOB) and historically underutilized business (HUBZone) goals as well.
Many of the small businesses attending the conference have been partners with USAID in the past. While USAID wants to continue to work with these organizations, a significant number of conference attendees were new to USAID—meaning they have never worked directly with the Agency before. The conference helped to explain how USAID operates, connect new businesses to USAID staff, and share approaches and best practices for partnering with the Agency. By sharing information with these potential partners, USAID seeks to continue its positive trajectory as new, capable small businesses enter the Agency marketplace.
Localization and U.S. Small Businesses
Localization and its relationship with USAID’s small business priorities was a recurring topic at the conference. USAID has two localization goals: to provide at least a quarter of the Agency’s program funds directly to local partners by the end of FY 2025, and, by 2030, to ensure that at least 50 percent of USAID programming places local communities in the lead to set priorities, codesign projects, drive implementation, or evaluate the impact of our programs.
Some representatives of U.S. small businesses expressed interest about how these goals impact funding opportunities for them. Throughout the conversation between small businesses and USAID staff, the question was answered by emphasizing how U.S. small businesses can and do perform a critical role in advancing locally led development.
“Small businesses have unique insights into how to navigate the hurdles of working with USAID as a new or smaller organization—not unlike local partners,” shared Tom Wilson, USAID’s New Partnerships Initiative (NPI) Senior Program Analyst, who spoke on the OSDBU localization panel. “We’ve also seen how small businesses can be innovative champions of more locally led programming. So when NPI designed two new mechanisms to support the Agency in working with local partners on capacity strengthening, compliance, and linguistic services, we intentionally created these as small business set-aside contracts in collaboration with OSDBU.” MORE