HUB Zone

Fueling Small Business Growth

What is the HUBZone Program?

Established in 1997 in accordance to the Small Business Reauthorization Act, the Historically Underutilized Business Zones (HUBZone) programs’ principal focus is job creation and increasing capital investment in underutilized business zones. The HUBZone program requires agencies to limit competition on certain contracts to qualified HUBZone small businesses.  Specifically, the Federal Government has a goal of awarding 3% of all dollars for Federal Prime contracts to HUBZone Certified Small Businesses. 

The HUBZone program mission is to promote job growth, capital investment, and economic development to historically underutilized business zones, referred to as HUBZones.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) administers several programs to support small businesses, including the Historically Underutilized Business Zone Empowerment Contracting (HUBZone) program. The HUBZone program is “a place-based contracting assistance program whose primary objective is job creation and increasing capital investment in distressed communities.

The HUBZone program provides participating small businesses located in areas with low income, high poverty, or high levels of unemployment with contracting opportunities in the form of setasides, sole-source awards, and price-evaluation preferences. The Competition in Contracting Act of 1984 generally requires “full and open competition” for government procurement contracts.3 However, procurement set-asides are permissible competitive procedures.

A set-aside restricts competition for a federal contract to specified contractors. Set-asides can be exclusive or partial, depending upon whether the entire procurement or just part of it is so restricted. A sole-source award is a federal contract awarded, or proposed for an award, without competition. When a contract’s anticipated total value, including any options, does not exceed $4.5 million ($7.5 million for manufacturing contracts), the contracting officer may award a qualified HUBZone small business a sole source contract without competition.In contrast, when the contract’s anticipated value exceeds these thresholds, the contract generally must be awarded via a set-aside with competition limited to qualified HUBZone small businesses so long as there is a reasonable expectation that at least two eligible and responsible HUBZone small businesses will submit offers and the award can be made at fair market price. In addition, in any full and open competition for a federal contract bids from qualified HUBZone small businesses “shall be deemed as being lower than the price offered by another offeror (other than another small business concern), if the price offered by the qualified HUBZone small business concern is not more than 10% higher than the price offered by the otherwise lowest, responsive, and the responsible offeror.

In FY2020, the federal government awarded nearly $13.6 billion to HUBZone-certified businesses. Of that amount, $2.1 billion was awarded with a HUBZone preference ($2.0 billion through a HUBZone set-aside, $67.5 million through a HUBZone sole-source award, and $48.5 million through a HUBZone price-evaluation preference) and $4.0 billion was awarded to HUBZone-certified businesses in open competition with other firms. The remaining $7.5 billion was awarded with another small business preference (e.g., for small businesses generally or for 8(a), women-owned (WOSBs), and service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs)).

As of May 31, 2022, the SBA’s Dynamic Small Business Search database included 6,475 firms with active HUBZone certifications.

For additional information, visit the SBA’s HUBZone Program Page

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Hampshire County Development Authority
91 South High Street
Romney, WV 26757