MBDA Native American Business Enterprise Entrepreneurship Program

MBDA's American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Project provides support for the American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities (AIANNH) and has been one focus area of MBDA’s overall support for minority business development since the Agency’s inception. Although AIANNH businesses experience a range of common needs and problems that impede growth, MBDA has identified the following three Strategic Initiatives to support Tribal and native business growth:

1. AIANNH Strategic Initiatives (Applicants must select one or more of the following initiatives to address in the application.)

a) Innovation and Entrepreneurship (e.g., business training, access to capital, incubators, accelerators, Federal program coaching);
b) Strategic Planning (e.g., fostering, developing and/or implementing entrepreneurial and economic development); and
c) Transformative Projects (e.g., support for MBEs involved in infrastructure focused public-private partnerships, and broadband).

Eligible applicants include: Indian Tribal governments, Tribal entities, Alaska Native Corporations, Native Hawaiian entities, for-profit entities (including but not limited to sole-proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations), non-profit organizations, institutions of higher education, commercial organizations, state and local government entities, and quasi-government entities.

MBE Service Recipients - Organizations that are owned or controlled by the following persons or groups of persons are the organizations that are considered MBEs for the purpose of this BAA AIANNH initiative and for the purpose of pilot or demonstration projects designed to overcome their challenges: Native Americans (Including American Indians), Alaska Natives (including Alaska Native Corporations and Tribal entities), Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Hasidic Jews, and Asian Indians.

The MBDA National Director is the MBDA Selecting Official and makes the final recommendation to the Grants Officer regarding the funding of applications under this Announcement. The Selecting Official will recommend funding for applications evaluated as meritorious based on the final scores as prepared by the Merit Review Panel; however, the Selecting Official also may recommend an application for an award based on one or more of the following selection factors: the availability of funds, Presidential, Department of Commerce, or MBDA priorities; and geographic distribution of Projects and/or geographic
region/area served by the Project.

Prior to making a final recommendation for funding to the Grants Officer, MBDA may conduct negotiations with an applicant regarding the elements of the application and/or may request that the applicant provide written clarifications regarding its application. After applications are proposed for funding by the selecting official, the Grants Management Division performs administrative reviews. These may include reviews of the financial
stability of an applicant, quality of the applicant's management systems, history of performance, and the applicant's ability to effectively implement statutory, regulatory, or other requirements imposed on non-Federal entities. Upon review of these factors, if appropriate, special conditions that correspond to the degree of risk may be applied to an award.

Additional details may be found in the Notice of Funding Opportunity Announcement.

The notice of award (CD-450) is executed by the Department of Commerce Grants Officer and is the authorizing document. It is generally provided electronically via the Grants Online system to the Authorized Representative of the recipient organization. The Authorized Representative for a successful applicant will receive instructions from MBDA on how to access the Grants Online system to accept the award.

MBDA anticipates award(s) will be made with a start date of September 1, 2021. MBDA will notify unsuccessful applicants, in writing, after a final selection has been made
and after an offer has been accepted. Those applications that are not ultimately selected for funding will be retained by MBDA for a period of three (3) years after which they will be destroyed.

On occasion, competitive solicitations or competitive panels may produce less than optimum results, such as a competition resulting in the receipt of no applications or a competition resulting in all unresponsive applications received.