BUILD TO SCALE

Entrepreneurs, especially technology entrepreneurs, flourish in healthy ecosystems. Technology-based economic development (TBED) grows ecosystems in which entrepreneurs can build and scale technology-driven businesses, which in turn create high-skill and high-wage jobs, economic opportunity, and the industries of the future. EDA’s Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) awards grants through the Build to Scale (B2S) Program to foster technology-based ecosystems, to advance the growth of connected, innovation-centric economies that accelerate technology, and to enable commercialization to increase regional and global competitiveness.

Entities that are eligible for funding include:
• a State;
• an Indian tribe;
• a city or other political subdivision of a State;
• an entity whose application is supported by a State or a political subdivision of a state and that is—
o a nonprofit organization;
o an institution of higher education;
o a public-private partnership;
o a science or research park;
o a Federal laboratory;
o a venture development organization; or
o an economic development organization or similar entity that is focused primarily on improving science, technology, innovation, or entrepreneurship; or
• a consortium of any of the aforementioned entities.
EDA is not authorized to provide grants to individuals or other entity types that are not eligible under this NOFO, and such requests will not be considered for funding.
If an organization is currently implementing an OIE award (i.e., under a prior-year Build to Scale or Regional Innovation Strategies program funding opportunity) and submitting an application to the same or successor challenge under this NOFO, EDA will not consider that application for award unless all activities under the existing award, including but not limited to final reporting requirements, are completed and submitted to EDA prior to October 1, 2023.

Entities that are eligible for funding include:
• a State;
• an Indian tribe;
• a city or other political subdivision of a State;
• an entity whose application is supported by a State or a political subdivision of a state and that is—
o a nonprofit organization;
o an institution of higher education;
o a public-private partnership;
o a science or research park;
o a Federal laboratory;
o a venture development organization; or
o an economic development organization or similar entity that is focused primarily on improving science, technology, innovation, or entrepreneurship; or
• a consortium of any of the aforementioned entities.
EDA is not authorized to provide grants to individuals or other entity types that are not eligible under this NOFO, and such requests will not be considered for funding.
If an organization is currently implementing an OIE award (i.e., under a prior-year Build to Scale or Regional Innovation Strategies program funding opportunity) and submitting an application to the same or successor challenge under this NOFO, EDA will not consider that application for award unless all activities under the existing award, including but not limited to final reporting requirements, are completed and submitted to EDA prior to October 1, 2023.

EDA staff will conduct an eligibility and technical completeness review (the “Technical Review”) of all applications received by the application deadline. Applications received from ineligible entities will not be considered for funding. Applications that do not contain all forms and required documentation listed in section of this NOFO may be deemed non-responsive and excluded from further consideration. EDA expects all applications to complete and include all required forms and documentation. However, EDA, in its sole discretion, may determine that an omission is curable and therefore may continue its consideration of the application despite the deficiency. Technical Review will be conducted separately for each application for each competition.
Merit Reviewers will evaluate applications against the evaluation criteria. Each application will be reviewed by at least three Merit Reviewers. Merit Reviewers may include, but are not limited to, DOC and EDA personnel and other federal and non-federal subject matter experts. EDA, in its sole discretion, may use a statistical technique to normalize, aggregate, and group Merit Reviewers’ quantitative evaluations (i.e., scores) and may consider qualitative Merit Reviewer evaluation information. For each competition, the most highly ranked applications will be recommended to the Grants Officer as the applications that merit consideration for EDA funding. The most highly ranked applications under this NOFO will be forwarded to the Selection Official.