The folks over at the Small Business Administration have been talking about small businesses in underserved communities quite a bit lately. The idea, presumably, is to seek them out and offer helpful goodies so that the underserved won’t be anymore. Over the last few months, there have been several announcements on the subject. The SBA has announced a couple of new lending programs — the Small Loan Advantage and Community Advantage editions of the 7(a) loan program — a procurement program and an entrepreneurial training program targeting “underserved” entrepreneurs, including minorities, women and small businesses located in rural communities. There’s also a new Advisory Council on Underserved Communities to offer input, advice and recommendations on how SBA can reach out to and assist those small businesses in “underserved” communities with its existing programs.

Among all this service for the underserved, one group has been mentioned often but remains largely unserved: rural small business owners. In fact, if you visit the SBA “Small Business Audiences” page and click on the link for Rural Entrepreneurs, you will find only one program. It is an investment program, similar to the Small Business Investment Company program, targeting rural areas. If one might be forgiven for saying this, lack of access to venture capital is not among the top issues facing the typical rural small business. In other words, it looks like rural small and microbusiness owners remain underserved. It is to be hoped that newly formed Advisory Council on Underserved Communities will advise the SBA that it needs to step up its initiatives targeting the special challenges facing rural small business owners. Otherwise, there will be a large and gaping hole in the SBA’s program offerings — particularly its much-celebrated initiatives for the underserved.