SECSmallBiz Update: Highlights from FY2024

From time to time our SEC Small Business Advocacy Team enjoys sharing recent highlights from our work with small businesses and their investors.  Below is an update capping the end of the government fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2024.

New Director

This year, we welcomed Stacey Bowers as the Office’s new Director. Hear her speak about our advocacy mission and her outlook on our work with small businesses and their investors in this first episode of our recently launched Let’s Talk Small Business video series.

Education and Outreach

Education is an essential part of our mission. In September, we published two new resources explaining how to review businesses’ income statements and balance sheets. These “one-pagers” are part of our suite of Capital-Raising Building Blocks resources that break down fundamental capital-raising concepts into plain language.

We’ve also been busy engaging with small businesses and investors across the country.  This year we participated in over 50 events and onsite visits, most recently engaging with entrepreneurial centers and angel investors in Boston, SBDCs in Atlanta, Women’s Business Centers and small business support organizations in Kansas City, and Borderplex ecosystem builders in El Paso.

Collaborating With the Team Behind Investor.gov

If you’ve ever browsed Investor.gov, you know it’s another great stop for educational materials. From financial tools and calculators to investor alerts and bulletins, the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy supports investors by providing education and information on how to protect yourself from the latest scams, as well as on issues of financial literacy and building and protecting personal wealth.

Our colleagues in that office engage with a wide range of audiences and we enjoyed partnering with them on a few events this year, including our joint financial workshop for entrepreneurs hosted by Black Ambition and our Workflow Wednesday session for Lightship Capital, where we talked about factors to consider when embarking on the capital-raising journey.

Learn more about OIEA and their mission critical work by watching this brief interview with
Deputy Director, John Moses, in our Let’s Talk Small Business series.

Much More to Come!

We are currently working on our FY 2024 Annual Report, which will feature a treasure trove of data on the state of capital formation as well as our policy recommendations for Congress and the Commission. We look forward to sharing that with you in December and continuing to engage on our shared mission of advocating for small business capital raising!

In the meantime, explore our resources for small business and send us your ideas and feedback. We’d love to hear from you!.