The Small Business Development Center program was created by Congress in 1980 through a joint effort by Iowa Congressman Neal Smith and Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. The SBDC program in Iowa commenced in 1981 with Iowa State University as its host sponsor. Since then, the Iowa SBDC has grown from four to fifteen regional centers. These centers are hosted by the three Regent universities and ten community colleges, all of them coordinated through the SBDC state center on the Iowa State campus.
 
Small business is one of the leading drivers of the national economy. Firms of 500 or fewer employees represent 99.7% of employer firms, employ half of all private sector employees, pay more than 45% of total U.S. private payroll, and have generated 60% to 80% of net new jobs annually in the past decade.
 
Additionally, small firms create more than half of non-farm private gross domestic product, supply 22.8% of the total value of federal prime contracts, hire 40% of high-tech workers, and make up 97% of all identified exporters, producing 28.6% of the known export value. Small innovative firms produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.
 
The Iowa SBDC is a proud contributor to the vitality of Iowa’s economy and business climate. The fifteen regional Small Business Development Centers in Iowa are dedicated to providing hands-on assistance to all kinds of businesses, from start-ups to 500 employee firms, to the marketing of new and promising technologies. Our work is done quietly and in confidence, but the SBDC’s impact is huge.
 
Since its inception in 1981, the Iowa SBDC has spent 350,000 hours counseling over 60,000 clients. In 2007 alone, we spent 11,474 hours counseling 2,152 clients. These clients added or retained 824 jobs and raised over $29 million in capital for their Iowa businesses.
 
In the last three years, Iowa SBDC clients have: