§30305 Outreach program

Summary

The Administration must pick, by competition, an outside organization to work with its centers, aerospace contractors, and colleges. That partner will run a program to help small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses across the United States learn about the Administration’s space and aeronautics technologies. The program must support the Administration’s Innovative Partnerships Program. It must help private companies understand agency technologies to make commercial products, build a network of colleges, contractors, and centers that will donate technical help (giving preference to socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses, small businesses owned and controlled by service‑disabled veterans, and HUBZone small businesses), and create a network of economic development groups to spread the program. The donated‑help rule does not apply to the Administration’s contracting actions. No later than one year after October 15, 2008, and every year after that, the Administrator must send a report to the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. The report must list how many small businesses got help, jobs created and retained, and volunteer hours donated by the Administration, contractors, and schools; estimate the total dollar value of the economic impact from those businesses; and show how the program’s funds were spent.