Optimal analyzed small business program designed to provide business development assistance

Date: July 1, 2020

Established in 2016, the All Small Mentor-Protégé Program (ASMPP) extends the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) approved mentor-protégé relationships to every small business. The program’s goal is to develop strong protégé firms through mentor-provided business development assistance.

Optimal assessed why firms leave the ASMPP either during the application process before they are approved for the program or during the program participation after being approved for the program. Understanding why firms withdraw from program enrollment or terminate their program participation would help SBA better educate and assist firms to enroll, participate, and succeed. It would also help firms identify if the program is right for them before they apply. In addition to helping the program develop better outreach, education, and prescreening, the results may have the potential to inform SBA about opportunities for tightening loopholes and better preventing program withdrawals and terminations. The ASMPP was modeled after the successful SBA 8(a) Mentor-Protégé Program. 

Find out more about the All Small Mentor-Protégé Program.

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Optimal Solutions Group, LLC 

Founded in 2000, Optimal Solutions Group, LLC, is a nonpartisan public policy research and data analytics firm located at the University of Maryland’s Discovery District in College Park.  Optimal employees have varied backgrounds in such fields as public policy, computer science, data science, economics, education, health, housing, sociology, statistics and information management.