Women's Business Centers' Client Outcomes: Evaluation Report

The Small Business Administration (SBA) wanted to see how Women’s Business Center (WBC) clients were progressing on key outcomes defined in the WBC logic model and then use that information to guide future measurement efforts for the program. To do this, the SBA commissioned an evaluation that looked at both SBA data and additional external data sources. This allowed the SBA to assess program effectiveness—essentially, how well the WBC program was helping clients achieve the intended outcomes.

The evaluation found that over the period of 2015 to 2024, WBCs supported more than 600,000 people across the nation, and about 74 percent of them were women and about four percent were military-affiliated clients. WBC clients had greater new business starts but fewer jobs, smaller loan amounts, and lower value of government contracts than comparable businesses not served by WBCs. Over all the years, new business starts were highest among WBC clients who received technical assistance compared to other WBC services. WBC clients reported a higher number of jobs compared to Small Business Development Center (SBDC) or SCORE clients after 2021. Volatility in contract value was greater among WBC clients compared to SBDC and SCORE clients. 

The evaluation report included actionable recommendations that SBA can use to better measure impact and improve WBCs and other entrepreneurial development programs. Evaluators engaged SBA staff to collaboratively revise the WBC logic model, developed new metrics, and provided capacity-building activities to strengthen WBC’s ability to measure the program’s impact.