New York State Small Business Development Center - History of The SBDC

History of The SBDC

The Small Business Administration (SBA) is a United States government agency that provides support to small businesses. The SBA was created by way of the Small Business Act of July 30, 1953. The Small Business Development Center program grew out of the University Business Development Center (UBDC) program. A 1976 press release announcing the UBDC proclaimed that this new concept “could increase substantially the leverage SBA can provide in counseling and advising small business concerns.” The pilot program for the UBDC was established at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona in 1976. Throughout 1977 seven more universities received funding, including Georgia, Missouri, Nebraska, and Maine.

By 1979, the UBDC program was renamed the SBDC program, and pilot centers existed at sixteen states across the U.S. By 1980, performance surveys of SBDC clients, as well as existing small business owners, saw fit to expand the SBDC project throughout the country. On July 2, 1980, President Carter signed into law the Small Business Development Act of 1980. This act provided $8.5 million in annual funding. In 1984, a program was established in New York State. The SBA in a 1985 report noted that, “Several SBDC’s have established separate International Trade Centers (ITC) as part of their state-wide operations. These international trade centers are currently located in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania.”.

An SBDC was established in Guam in 1995 and in May 2000, the 58th SBDC program was established when the SBA funded an SBDC program for American Samoa. In 2004, federal lawmakers reauthorized the SBDC program for two additional years, at a funding level of $135,000,000.