Assistance program
MBDA Specialty Center Program
$82.6 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Minority Business Development Agency, Commerce, Department of
- Assistance
- Cooperative Agreements;Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 11.802
- What it does
- The objectives of the overall program are to 1) provide financial assistance awards for projects that affect or contribute to the establishment, preservation and strengthening of minority business enterprises (MBEs) as directed by congressional mandate, and 2) promote the development of novel approaches to increasing the strategic growth and global competitiveness of MBEs through the administration of pilot or demonstration projects.
- Who benefits
- Congressionally mandated award beneficiaries are members of the minority business community. Pilot or demonstration project beneficiaries are minority business enterprises.
- Who applies
- Applicants eligible to provide services under pilot or demonstration projects are nonprofit organizations, for-profit firms, State and local governments, Native American Tribal entities, and educational institutions. Applicants for congressionally mandated projects are those specifically identified in applicable legislation.
- Authorized by
- 15 U.S.C. § 1512
- Program site
- http://www.mbda.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments