The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is offering up to $9,000,000 in prize awards through the 2025 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition (GAFC), to accelerate the growth and maturity of innovation-based entrepreneurship ecosystems. This competition seeks to identify impactful and innovative submissions from Entrepreneur Support Organizations (ESOs) that will support entrepreneurs and small business owners in undercapitalized regions, industries, and communities.
These prizes will build ESO capacity, connectivity, and community across entrepreneurs, nonprofits, investors, universities, philanthropies, corporations, and other ecosystem stakeholders to ultimately drive the successful launch, growth, and scale of innovation-driven small businesses – encouraging new entrants into the innovation economy and driving entrepreneurial dynamism across America.
Competition Goals:
• Accelerate the growth and maturity of innovation-based entrepreneurship ecosystems across the United States.
• Strengthen American innovation ecosystems by catalyzing and/or strengthening capacity, connectivity, and community between entrepreneurs, nonprofits, investors, universities, philanthropies, corporations, and other ecosystem stakeholders.
• Incentivize innovation ecosystem stakeholders to provide open and inclusive opportunities for new entrants to participate in the innovation economy within undercapitalized regions, industries, and communities.
• Increase the pipeline and success of innovation-driven entrepreneurs and small businesses in accessing the necessary capital and other resources to advance their growth, driving entrepreneurial dynamism in their ecosystem.
Prizes will be awarded in a two-stage process:
• Stage One: $75,000 cash prizes will be competitively awarded to ESOs clearly describing the current state of their innovation ecosystem, the challenge they intend to address in their ecosystem that is affecting entrepreneurs and small businesses, their hypothesis of potential solutions, and their specific role in the solutions. Successful submissions will emphasize unique approaches to innovation ecosystem challenges, identify the stakeholders within the ecosystem who are affected by the challenge, demonstrate an understanding of stakeholder incentives, and explain their theory of change for addressing the identified problem.
• Stage Two: $150,000 cash prizes will be competitively awarded to ESOs to scale proposed solutions from Stage One in support of entrepreneurs and small businesses and share their learnings with the SBA. Successful submissions will present the outcomes of Stage One, provide a detailed sustainment plan for scaling successful aspects of their solution, and demonstrate how their approach can be integrated into their broader innovation ecosystem. Only 2025 GAFC Stage One Awardees are eligible to apply for Stage Two.
