Women’s Business Centers (WBC)

What this actually is

A national network of entrepreneurship centres designed to help women start and grow small businesses, offering free to low-cost counselling and training, plus help with federal contracting and with access to credit and capital. The access-to-capital work is the part that is genuinely hard to buy elsewhere: help assembling the financials and the story a lender needs to say yes. It is still counselling, not a grant. Find your nearest centre through the SBA local assistance search.

Who qualifies, and what trips people up

Aimed at women entrepreneurs, though centres serve broadly; there is no income test for counselling. Each WBC is run by a local host organisation with its own specialisms and class schedule, so two centres in the same state can offer quite different programmes. Training courses may carry a small fee; counselling is free.