Has your SBA 8a narrative been rejected?

Has your application for the SBA 8(a) program been denied due to your narrative of social/economic disadvantage? Don’t be discouraged, it’s not the time to give up, it’s the time to complete your narrative and that’s how it’s done.

With fewer than 8,000 SBA 8a certified businesses currently (as of March 2010 data), becoming certified remains a complicated and complex process. And there are some unwritten rules for writing the narrative to prepare it to meet SBA requirements, known as “preponderance of the evidence” that we’ll share with you.

Depending on who is the designated owner of the business will determine what type of narrative you will need to prepare. For example: if you are a designated minority, your narrative should only demonstrate economic disadvantage. If you are a female, belong to an undesignated minority, or are a service disabled veteran business owner, your narrative must demonstrate both social and economic disadvantage. If your business is owned by multiple minority owners, each will also need to prepare a narrative.

If you are a woman as well as a minority, you can only choose one category. We recommend that you prepare your SBA application as a minority owner, as you will only need to prepare the economic narrative instead of both.

We find that most narratives are rejected for the following reasons:

– Not providing enough information to “tell your story”. Most of our client narratives we prepare are between 5 and 9 pages. While the SBA 8a application instructions don’t provide any clues as to the length of the narratives, we believe that to tell your story and meet SBA’s expectations, you need to write more than a couple of paragraphs.

– Do not include specific details or extended documentation. While most SBA 8a applicants do not have brief documents related to discrimination and harassment, many of our clients have documents or emails that support their nightmare stories at work. We recommend that you refer to these documents in your online application and include them with your paper documentation to support your narrative.

– Include events in your narrative that address education, career, and business history. It’s not enough to just write about one aspect of your life, you need to address how you’ve experienced discrimination in your ability to get an education, work for companies in career development experiences, and the variety of business disappointments you’ve experienced. The best narratives address all three areas.

– Include first-hand accounts of your experiences to confirm that they really happened. We encourage clients to ask former supervisors, co-workers, and other staff members who witnessed discrimination and harassment events to prepare written statements recounting the events you have mentioned in your narrative. This gives credibility to the facts mentioned.