The Small Business Administration's Boots to Business Program

This audit report presents the results of our audit of the Small Business Administration’s (SBA’s) Boots to Business Program with the objectives to determine whether SBA’s oversight of the Boots to Business Program ensured (1) efficiency of program operations, (2) that the program achieved its goals and objectives, and (3) that recipients complied with the cooperative agreement requirements. The purpose of SBA’s Boots to Business Program is to provide service members interested in exploring business ownership or other self-employment opportunities with the information to develop business plans and to connect service members to SBA resource partners and start-up capital.

We found that even though SBA made improvements to the program, SBA could make further improvements to better reach the target population and increase participation in the program. Additionally, we found that SBA did not meet its established performance goals for the number of participants or the graduation rate from the 8-week course. We also found SBA did not ensure that recipients measured and reported performance outcomes. Furthermore, one of the recipients we reviewed did not report its B2B program costs separately in its annual budget and financial reporting. Consequently, SBA could not determine what the recipient spent on the B2B program or assess the validity of the reimbursement requests. Because the recipient did not separate its B2B expenditures, we consider $419,912 of the recipient’s cooperative agreement award as unsupported questioned costs.

OIG recommended seven recommendations to enhance the overall management and effectiveness of the Boots to Business Program. SBA’s planned actions resolved three recommendations and closed two of the three resolved recommendations. OIG will work with SBA management to resolve the remaining four recommendations through the audit follow-up process.