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Small Business Administration (SBA)

The federal agency that sets small business size standards, manages small business contracting programs, and provides loans and counseling to help small businesses grow.

How It Works

The Small Business Administration (SBA), established in 1953 by the Small Business Act, is the federal agency responsible for supporting small businesses through contracting preferences, lending programs, disaster assistance, and counseling. Its roughly 4,500 staff and $1.2 billion operating budget (excluding program loan volumes) touch nearly every aspect of federal small-business policy. Key SBA functions include: (1) setting size standards by NAICS code that determine which firms qualify as small for federal contracting; (2) managing socioeconomic programs including 8(a) Business Development, HUBZone, WOSB/EDWOSB, and jointly with VA the SDVOSB/VOSB programs; (3) monitoring agency performance against the 23% government-wide small business prime contracting goal and publishing the annual Small Business Scorecard that grades each agency; (4) operating the 7(a) and 504 loan guaranty programs (roughly $30-50 billion in annual loan volume in normal years, surging to over $700 billion during the PPP program in 2020-2021); (5) administering disaster loans after presidentially-declared disasters; and (6) running Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), Women's Business Centers, SCORE, and Veterans Business Outreach Centers for counseling and training. The SBA's Office of Government Contracting and Business Development (GCBD) certifies 8(a), HUBZone, and WOSB firms, processes size protests, and pursues misrepresentation cases. SBA's Office of Inspector General has been particularly prominent in pandemic-era fraud oversight, estimating over $200 billion in potential fraud across PPP and EIDL and leading the largest wave of federal fraud prosecutions in U.S. history.

Related Terms

  • Small Business Set-Aside, A federal contracting provision that reserves certain contracts exclusively for small businesses, part of the government's goal of awarding 23% of contract dollars to small firms.
  • NAICS Code, The North American Industry Classification System code, a 6-digit number that classifies a business by the type of economic activity it performs, used to determine small business size standards.
  • Set-Aside Programs (8(a), WOSB, HUBZone, SDVOSB), Targeted small business contracting preferences for socioeconomically disadvantaged, women-owned, HUBZone, and service-disabled veteran-owned firms, each with a government-wide prime contract goal.

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About This Definition

This definition is part of the TaxDollarData Federal Spending Glossary, 46 terms explaining how the U.S. government spends taxpayer money. All definitions are written in plain language for taxpayers, journalists, contractors, and researchers.

this entity is one of the U.S. federal government spending concepts that recurs across this site. The definition above is the technical answer; the paragraphs below add the practical context for how the concept connects to the USASpending.gov federal awards data data behind every per-entity page on the site.

In the USASpending.gov federal awards data data, this concept shapes one or more of the fields that drive the per-entity grades and rankings on this site. The methodology page describes which fields feed into which output; this glossary entry documents the underlying term.

Source: USAspending.gov, 2026.