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The Program-Federal Government Helps Minority Business Federal efforts to aid minority businesses began in the 1960s when the Small Business Administration began making federally guaranteed loans and governmentsponsored management and technical assistance available to minority business enterprises. While this program enabled many minority entrepreneurs to form new businesses, the results were disappointing, since managerial inexperience, unfavorable locations, and capital shortages led to high failure rates. Even 15 years after the program was implemented, minority business receipts were not quite two percent of the national economys total receipts. Recently federal policymakers have adopted an approach intended to accelerate development of the minority business sector by moving away from directly aiding small minority enterprises and toward supporting large, growth oriented minority firms through intermediary companies. In this approach, large corporations participate in the development of successful and stable minority businesses by making use of government-sponsored venture capital. The capital is used by a participating company to establish a Minority Enterprise Small Businesses that have potential to become future suppliers of customers of the sponsoring company. MESBICs are the result of the belief that providing established firms with easier access to relevant management techniques and more job-specific experience, as well as substantial amounts of capital, gives those firms a greater opportunity to develop sound business foundations than does simply making general management experience and small amounts of capital available. Further, since potential markets for the minority businesses already exist through the sponsoring companies, the minority businesses face considerably less risk in terms of location and market fluctuation. Following early financial and operating problems, sponsoring corporations began to capitalize MESBICs far above the legal minimum of $500,000 in order to generate sufficient income and to sustain the quality of management needed. MESBICs are now emerging as increasingly important financing sources for minority enterprises. | 
