Assistance program
Growth Accelerator Fund Competition
$24.2 Million committed in FY2021–FY2025
- Agency
- Small Business Administration, Small Business Administration
- Assistance
- Direct Payments for Specified Use;Direct Payments for Specified Use (Cooperative Agreements)
- CFDA number
- 59.065
- What it does
- Growth Accelerators provide focused assistance to STEM/R&D entrepreneurs to start and scale their businesses. Typically run by experienced entrepreneurs, accelerators help small businesses access seed capital, mentors, counseling, overhead services and networking opportunities. These organizations help accelerate a startup company’s path towards success with targeted advice on revenue growth, job growth and sourcing outside funding. Accelerators also help foster an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem by stimulating entrepreneurship outside of traditional startup hubs. Applicants in the 2021 Competition focused their proposed efforts on one of the following groups: women entrepreneurs, minority entrepreneurs, or other target entrepreneurs identified by applicants (ie. rural, veterans, individuals with disabilities, etc.).
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- This competition is open to citizens or permanent residents of the United States who are at least eighteen (18) years of age at the time of their submission of an entry (or teams of such individuals); and private entities, such as corporations or other organizations, both for profit and nonprofit, that are incorporated or organized in and maintain a primary place of business in the United States. Individuals submitting on behalf of corporations, nonprofits, or other organizations or groups of individuals (such as an academic class or other team) must meet the eligibility requirements for individual Contestants. Consult www.sba.gov/accelerators and www.sbir.gov/accelerators for further information.
- Authorized by
- America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science Reauthorization Act of 2010 ("America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010").
- Program site
- http://www.sbir.gov/accelerators ↗
Committed by fiscal year
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