Much of the rest of the meeting was spent
reviewing benefits and ways the NASE
communicates with Members, with ideas and
discussions on making them better. This
dialogue will carry on through the Council’s
one-year term, as they develop
recommendations for the NASE to continue as
the nation’s leading resource for the
self-employed and micro-businesses. The
Council also aims to take an active part in
the NASE public policy efforts, advocating
for positive change for women
micro-businesses through federal
legislation.
Women entrepreneurs are a fast-growing
segment of the micro-business community,
with an estimated 10.6 million women-owned
firms in America. According to NASE original
research, start-ups of women-owned
businesses have grown by double digits
annually from 2000-2003, significantly
outpacing growth in the 1990s and
out-numbering men-owned start-ups by nearly
a 2-to-1 ratio in 2003.
Click here for more information on the
Women’s Advisory Council, including
biographical information on the members.
Future Entrepreneur Scholarship Winner is Ivy-League bound
The NASE chose 19-year-old Joy Longfellow,
of Farmingdale, Maine, to receive the
nation’s largest and most prestigious
entrepreneurial college award, the NASE
Future Entrepreneur Scholarship. The
renewable, four-year scholarship is worth up
to $24,000 and is the only one of its kind
that promotes the philosophy of
entrepreneurship, rather than a specific
field of study.
Longfellow, a college sophomore, is the 10th
annual recipient of the award and plans to
attend Cornell University this fall, where
she will study plant sciences.
“Over the past decade, the NASE has awarded
more than a million dollars in scholarships
to the children and dependents of our
members through our two scholarship
programs,” NASE President Robert Hughes
said.
Longfellow was valedictorian of her
graduating class last year, where she
carried a 4.0 GPA. She was involved in many
extracurricular activities, including track,
jazz and orchestral bands. In addition, she
played soccer and was named captain of her
team her junior and senior years. She also
devoted time to her fellow teens by serving
as a peer counselor and special needs
volunteer.
Her mother and father, NASE Members Walter
and Pamela Longfellow, own two independent
businesses of their own -- a convenience
store and a diner. The Longfellows run both
of these, while at the same time
occasionally helping out by working at the
family’s wholesale greenhouse.
“It is very encouraging for me, as NASE
President, to see how our members have
passed down their hard-working American
values to their children,” Hughes said.
“This is why the Future Entrepreneur
Scholarship program is so important. It
allows us to keep the relationships with our
current members, while at the same time,
building all new ones with young
entrepreneurs, nationwide.”
Longfellow hopes to turn her green thumb and
love of plants into a degree that will allow
her entrepreneurial aspirations to take off.
She plans on opening her own greenhouse,
“Joy's Specialty Plugs,” where she will grow
and distribute flowers and vegetable
seedlings.
Click here for more information on the
NASE Future Entrepreneur scholarship.
Federal Government Revises Small Business Contracting Numbers Upward, but NASE Urges More
The
U.S. Small Business Administration
recently announced that the federal
government was making a $3 billion upward
revision to the total number of prime
contract dollars awarded to small businesses
in the 2003 fiscal year. The new total of
$65.5 billion represents a 23 percent jump
over fiscal year 2002 and sets a new record
for small business prime contracting.
According to the SBA, the revised number
also confirms that the federal government
exceeded its own statutory requirements for
small business contracting in 2003, awarding
23.6 percent of the total number of prime
contract dollars by the federal government
to small business.
The NASE is pleased to see the increase in
small business contracting with the federal
government. However, the NASE will continue
to push for simplifying the federal
procurement process and the unbundling of
contracts in all federal agencies so the
small business can further compete with
large businesses in the federal contracting
arena.
A separate study by the
SBA Office of Advocacy found that small
firms may rely more on e-procurement tools
for obtaining federal contracts than do
their larger counterparts. Among their
findings, the report's authors noted that
certain barriers appear to prevent small
businesses from more effective use of
e-procurement. These include shifts in the
government's e-procurement system, the
expense of monitoring procurement offerings,
and confusion over multiple points of entry
to procurement systems.
The report, Trends in Electronic Procurement
and Electronic Commerce and Their Impact on
Small Business, can be found at
http://www.sba.gov/advo/.
