SCHB Speaks Out on SBIR – June 2009
Download Letter from SCHB Councilor to House Committee on Small Business
Also, we sent our members the following News Note on June 9th, 2009:
Dear SCHB members,
The U.S. House of Representatives’ Small Business Committee began hearings on Thursday, June 4, 2009 on renewal of the SBIR program. Please contact your House member and members of this committee to share your views.
Items of particular concern are:
• Keep eligibility the same. There is great pressure from venture capitalist to extend SBIR eligibility to their individual invested companies. This would give an unfair advantage to these companies, which would have the resources of the parent venture company for searching, proposal writing, and reporting.
• Increase size of grants by increasing the funding incrementally at 0.5%/year to a total of 5% from the current 2.5% of the federal extramural research budget.
• Increase the size of grants. Phase I to $150,000 and Phase II to $1,000,000.
• Limit size of awards to the prescribed amounts. Some agencies would like to freedom to make very large awards to some grantees. This would reduce the number of SBIR awards.
Excellent information on the value of small high businesses is in the link below from the Small Business Technology Council:
Why are high-tech small businesses so important to the United States?
Thank you for supporting this important legislation for small businesses.
Yours sincerely,
Sharon V. Vercellotti
SCHB Councilor
President
V-LABS, INC.
423 N. Theard St
COVINGTON, LA 70433-2837
985-893-0533 telephone
985-893-0517 fax
http://www.v-labs.com
v-labs@v-labs.com
