Tag Archives: Mentor Protege Program

Webinar! Mentor Protégé and Legal Aspects To Be Mindful Of on June 5, 2024

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Please join Federal government contracts attorneys John Holtz and Stephanie Ellis for this informative webinar, hosted by the Catalyst Center for Business & Entrepreneurship, on June 5 at 10:00 am CDT.

The SBA’s Mentor Protege Program allows two or more businesses to come together and form a joint venture to bid on small business set-aside government contracts. One of the most advantageous aspects of this program is the ability for a large business to mentor a small business through the use of a joint venture. When a large business mentors a small business, the SBA approved joint venture can obtain and perform small business set-aside contracts despite the size of the large business. Join us as we discuss the recent changes in the SBA’s Mentor Protege Program and explore how you can use this program as a tool for scaling your business (whether large or small). Register here.

GAO Says: SBA’s Rules for Mentor-Protégé Joint Venture Experience Evaluations May Limit Solicitation Terms

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Contractors will often enter into mentor protégé relationships and joint ventures to leverage the experience and skills of multiple parties for various reasons. SBA regulations dictate how the capabilities, past performance, and experience of a mentor-protégé joint venture will be evaluated. But at the end of the day, what matters is, whether agencies will follow those regulations in their small business set-aside solicitations and evaluations thereunder. A recent GAO case addressed this issue, providing further guidance on the interplay of solicitation terms for experience evaluations and SBA’s rules for evaluating mentor-protégé joint ventures’ experience.

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DoD Proposes Updates to its Mentor-Protégé Program

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Many federal contractors know of and participate in the SBA’s Mentor-Protégé Program. However, there are many agency specific Mentor-Protégé Programs, including the oldest continuous program, the Department of Defense’s Mentor-Protégé Program. The DoD’s program has been operating since around the First Gulf War, and like any good machine that is a few decades old, regularly needs some updates. Just in the past week, the DoD released the newest proposed changes to its program.

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SBA Clarifies Inconsistencies in 8(a) and Mentor-Protégé Ownership Rules

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A lot has been happening in the 8(a) Business Development Program world over the past couple of weeks. SBA has been busy updating regulations applicable to the 8(a) Program to both bring SBA rules into alignment with the economic realities in a post-COVID world and to make 8(a) requirements more uniform across the board. Here, we focus on a change to ownership rules for non-disadvantaged owners of 8(a) Program participants that are also part of an SBA-approved Mentor-Protégé Agreement.

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Event: “Small Business is BIG Business in Government Procurement” Training Workshop, August 15, 2023 San Antonio

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The San Antonio Business Opportunity Counsel will be hosting this workshop that will include a day of training, networking, speakers and exhibitors in beautiful San Antonio, Texas. I’m excited for the opportunity to be the keynote speaker and will be presenting on Mentor-Protégé, Teaming and Joint Venture Agreements. For more information on this event please visit www.saboc.org. Hope to see you there!

Event: SBA Mentor Protege Program Webinar hosted by Texas El Paso APEX Accelerators, June 27, 10:00am-11:30am MDT

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Touted as a “game-changer” when it was first introduced in 2016, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s All Small Mentor-Protégé Program isn’t new anymore. Known now as simply the “SBA Mentor-Protégé Program,” it is still extremely powerful for large and small contractors alike.

In this course, Koprince McCall Pottroff LLC government contracts attorneys Stephanie Ellis and I will explain the ins and outs of the Mentor-Protégé Program, covering the program’s eligibility requirements, its potent benefits (including the ability to form special mentor-protégé joint ventures), the application process, and common misconceptions and pitfalls. Free Registration Link here. Hope you will join us!

COFC Part II: Evaluation of Mentor-Protégé Joint Ventures

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A couple of weeks ago, I explored the Court of Federal Claims case of SH Synergy, LLC v. United States. In that blog, linked below, I looked at the first question raised in the protest that centered on the question of whether a mentor with two approved mentor protégé joint ventures with two different protégés under the SBA’s Mentor-Protégé Program is restricted from placing competing offers for a solicitation, in this case GSA’s Polaris solicitation. The answer to that was yes, they are restricted pursuant to 13 C.F.R. § 125.9. Because this decision was chocked full of useful information, and as promised, I’m back to look at the second issue tackled in this mammoth COFC opinion: did the solicitation’s terms, which required mentor-protégé joint ventures, woman-owned small business joint ventures, and service-disabled veteran owned small business joint ventures to be evaluated in the same manner as offerors, generally, violate procurement regulations? As you will see, the answer to that question is also yes, and it appears that this decision has already had an impact on other procurements.

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