Today’s topic is about the Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) set-aside program. If you have been following my blog for a while you will remember that I discussed that the Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business program has a 3% goal. This 3% goal applies to all the prime contracting dollars spent during the Federal Governments fiscal year. That is approximately $15 Billion that should be set-aside for this program. That is a lot of money folks.
Program benefits
The government limits competition for certain contracts to businesses that participate in the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program. Joining the disabled veterans’ business program makes your business eligible to compete for the program’s set-aside contracts and therefore eligible for your share of the $15 Billion if you can compete and win contracts. This set-aside, like all the others, does not limit you to compete for contract awards under other socio-economic programs if you qualify.
It is better for you to have more than one set-aside that you qualify for as it allows you to compete against fewer businesses in each of the categories. Remember that the majority of businesses will only qualify for small business and not the other set-aside programs.
Service-Disabled Veterans’ Owned Small Business program qualifications
To qualify for the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program, your business must:
- Be a small business
- Be at least 51% owned and controlled by one or more service-disabled veterans
- Have one or more service-disabled veterans manage day-to-day operations and also make long-term decisions
- Eligible veterans must have a service-connected disability
You need to have a letter from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs that states that you have a service-connected disability and you must have a DD Form 214 that shows that you were honorably discharged from one of the Armed Forces.
Presently, SBA does not certify that you and your business meet the requirements for a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. All you need to do is to update your SAM profile to reflect the status. However, that may be changing in the future. We will try to keep you updated as soon as we know more about it.
Now, if you want to be awarded contracts with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs then you need to be certified through their system. This system is called the Vets First Verification Program. The Department of Veterans Affairs awards a large number of contracts to veterans. Unfortunately, if your business is just a Veteran-Owned Small Business there is not a set-aside available to you.
Next weeks blog will be about the last set-aside Woman Owned Small Business.