Today no one knows how many veteran-owned small businesses or service-disabled-veteran-owned businesses there are, and there has not been an official count since the 1992 census. The anonymity of veteran-owned businesses was a recurring theme in remarks by William Elmore at the September AFCEA Small Business Committee meeting. He is associate administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) Office of Veterans’ Business Development. His office, established by the Veterans’ Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of 1999, is responsible for developing and executing policies and programs to assist small businesses owned by veterans.
“Veterans, and particularly those of the Vietnam era, do not present themselves as veterans. Not every vet wants to be identified as socially or economically disadvantaged,” Elmore, a Vietnam War veteran himself, explained. Without knowing who they are, it is impossible to ask the veteran-owned business community what they want, so the addition of two questions specifically about veteran status in the U.S. Census Bureau’s survey of business ownership is a significant first step. Elmore expects to have the statistics he needs from the survey in two years. Meanwhile, outreach, engage and prod are his mantra.
Despite the anonymity factor, Elmore’s assessment of progress on behalf of veteran-owned small businesses is, “I think we are doing better than we think; we just don’t know it.” Loans to veterans declined every year since 1995 until 2002. Then the SBA began to build a relationship with the U.S. Defense Department, laying the groundwork to engage the veteran community in procurement programs. The total 8(a) program procurement dollars spent with disabled-veteran-owned businesses has increased from $29 million in 2001 to $101 million this year. The Web site,
www.sba.gov/vets, redesigned in 2001, receives 79,000 hits a week.
In addition, private-sector veterans now have a voice inside government through the Advisory Committee on Veterans’ Business Affairs, also created by the 1999 veterans’ entrepreneurship legislation. Significantly, this 15-member committee includes eight veterans who own small businesses, and the committee reports its recommendations directly to the president and to Congress rather than through agency staff. AFCEA Dayton-Wright Chapter member Dennis DeMolet was appointed to a three-year term on that committee in February. The committee will present its annual report to the president this fall.
The AFCEA Small Business Committee meets monthly at AFCEA International Headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia. For more information about the committee’s activities, contact Diane Dellen at (703) 631-6119. or
e-mail.
