Years ago, while serving in county government, I was responsible for issuing a request for proposals for a solution our community urgently needed.

Like countless procurement professionals across America, my team spent months developing the scope of work, meeting with stakeholders and balancing cost, quality, compliance and public need. We expected multiple qualified businesses to compete.

Instead, only two proposals arrived. One was submitted a minute late and automatically disqualified. The other failed to meet the minimum requirements. After months of preparation, we had no award, no qualified vendor, and no solution for the residents depending on us.

I left that process frustrated, convinced we had done everything right. Then I asked the question that would change my career: Why weren’t more businesses bidding?

The answers surprised me. Owners told me they didn’t understand government contracting and didn’t know where to begin. They assumed contracts were already spoken for. Some didn’t trust government. Others couldn’t afford to spend weeks on a proposal they weren’t sure anyone would read.

That experience taught me something I have seen repeated at the city, county, state and federal levels. America doesn’t have a shortage of capable small businesses. It has an access problem.

And right now, that problem is getting worse. In March 2025, the Small Business Administration announced plans to cut its workforce by 43% and to close or relocate six regional offices, including the one in Atlanta. The government-wide goal for small disadvantaged businesses was rolled back from a 15% target to the statutory minimum of 5%. Just as the government needs more competition and a wider supplier base, the support system is being pulled back.

This is not simply a procurement issue; it is an economic development issue. Government is among the largest purchasers in the world, and every contract can create jobs and help small businesses grow into larger employers. When fewer compete, taxpayers lose competition, agencies lose innovation, and communities lose opportunity.

And fewer are competing. The federal government awarded a record $183 billion to small businesses in fiscal 2024, yet as many small firms won federal contracts in recent years as a decade earlier, even as the number of small businesses nationwide grew. Women-owned businesses received just 3.4% of federal contract dollars in fiscal 2024, short of a 5% goal Congress set in 1994 — a goal met only twice in three decades. The dollars are rising. The door is narrowing.

The problem is not that entrepreneurs lack talent. It is that we keep mistaking eligibility for accessibility.

We tell businesses to register, get certified, sit through a webinar or two. All of it useful. But after the orientation ends, many entrepreneurs are left alone to decipher hundreds of pages of solicitation documents, pricing requirements, compliance rules, past-performance narratives and subcontracting plans. A missed attachment, an unchecked box, or a misplaced signature can disqualify an exceptional business before anyone evaluates its ability to do the work.

Think about how backward that is. These entrepreneurs are experts; in cybersecurity, engineering, healthcare, construction. Yet we expect them to become procurement specialists before we will let them show what they already do well. Those are two completely different skills.

I have spent my career in a lot of different rooms; as a physician, a public health leader, a county executive and now an entrepreneur. And I have watched the same thing happen in all of them: capable people lose out, not because they were not good enough, but because no one ever showed them where the door was.

In fairness, I should disclose a stake: After leaving public service, I began working in this field. But this is far bigger than any one company or consultant. Again and again, I meet firms that could deliver the work but have no realistic path to compete for it, and guidance alone rarely closes that gap.

Some argue that if a business cannot navigate the process, it is not ready to perform the contract. I understand the concern. But writing a proposal and delivering a contract are not the same competency. We would never judge a gifted surgeon by her ability to master medical billing software before letting her enter an operating room. Yet that is effectively what we ask of thousands of entrepreneurs every year.

If we genuinely want more competition and more participation from women-owned, minority-owned and small businesses, we need to rethink what access means. That starts with simplifying solicitations where possible. It means measuring success not by how many businesses register, but by how many actually compete and win. And it means investing in hands-on proposal support and stronger partnerships between government and the organizations that prepare businesses to bid, therefore rewarding what a business can actually do, not how well it knows the paperwork.

But none of this changes until we stop believing opportunity exists just because an application is posted online. It does not. Opportunity exists only when a qualified business has a real, fair chance to win.

The next generation of innovators and employers is already here; creating jobs, building the technologies government agencies need. They were never the ones who had to prove themselves. The real question is whether we are willing to build a system where what a business can do, not how well it decodes the paperwork, decides who wins.

Dr. Nazeera Dawood is the founder and CEO of Vendorship Inc. and a former chief of staff to the chairman of the Fulton County, Georgia, Board of Commissioners. Trained as a physician with a master’s in public health, she has spent her career at the intersection of government, public health and small business.

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