While the federal government does not provide grants for starting or growing small businesses, it does provide a myriad of services to assist entrepreneurs in pursuit of their dreams. One of the mechanisms in place to promote small business growth and economic development are Community Development Financial Institutions.
The U.S Small Business Administration supports both the Small Business Development Center Program and SCORE to provide management assistance to current and prospective small business owners. These programs offer one-stop assistance to individuals and small businesses by providing a wide variety of information and guidance in central and easily accessible branch locations.
GovLoans is a website created by the United States Federal Government that is designed to serve as the public's gateway to loan program information. One of the several kinds of loans that are featured in the GovLoans website are Disaster Relief loans.
The Value-Added Producer Grants program is geared towards helping the Independent Producers of Agricultural Commodities, Agriculture Producer Groups, Farmer and Rancher Cooperatives, and Majority-Controlled Producer-Based Business Ventures in developing techniques that would create marketing opportunities and establish business plans involving viable marketing opportunities that involve the production of bio-based products from agricultural commodities.
According to a Private Capital, Public Good report recently released at the White House from a group of A-list impact investing and social enterprise specialists, the U.S. government can do a lot to spur the growth among the impact investing and social enterprise sectors.