Set-Asides & Programs

SBIR/STTR is back after a six-month lapse, extended through 2031 with new rules: a Strategic Breakthrough Award tier, foreign-influence screening, and proposal caps.

A size protest and a NAICS code appeal challenge different things and have very different deadlines. Here is how each one actually works.

If your firm holds a spot on a small-business multiple-award contract, SBA’s recertification rule under 13 CFR § 125.12 is not a background compliance detail anymore — it is now fully in ef

If you have been trying to figure out what the FAR overhaul did to small business set-asides, you have probably run into a confusing wall: the rewritten Part 19 has been circulating since September 2025, agencies are visibly operating under it, and yet the Federal Acquisition Regulation you can pull up on eCFR still reads…

If you have been preparing an 8(a) application by writing the story of discrimination you personally experienced and how it held your business back, stop. That test is being deleted. On August 11, 2026, SBA published a final rule that removes the rebuttable presumption of social disadvantage for individually owned firms and replaces the individualized…

Complete guide to the SBA 8(a) Business Development Program — eligibility, sole-source contracts, the nine-year term, mentor-protégé, and how to apply.

HUBZone certification guide — eligibility, the 35 percent residency test, set-asides, sole-source contracts, the 10 percent price preference, and how to apply.

WOSB and EDWOSB certification guide — eligibility, the economic-disadvantage test, set-asides, sole-source authority, and how to apply through certify.sba.gov.

The FAR Rule of Two explained — when contracting officers must set aside contracts for small business, how the two-firm test works, and how to influence it.

Federal set-asides and socioeconomic programs explained: the rule of two, size standards, 8(a), HUBZone, WOSB, SDVOSB, sole-source awards, and how to use them.