Government Capabilities Statement

A Government Capabilities Statement, also known as a Personal Capabilities Statement, is a brief overview of a vendor’s capabilities and specialties: showing their intent for proactively searching for, bidding on and receiving federal government contracts and opportunities. The best formats are the easier laid out templates. Less is more, you want the information to be easily noticed and discernable at a glance.

The Government Capabilities Statement is like a resume for an organization and is accepted as the standard method for vendors to introduce their company to buyers, prime-contractors, contracting officers, etc. This one page document states an entity’s capabilities, listing of goods/services, points of contact, past work performance, Federal Registration & Certification details (UEI, CAGE, NAICS, PSCs, etc.), Small Business Set-Aside status and geographic area served.

A Capabilities Statement must be included when submitting bids, RFQs, RFPs, ect. Certified Small Businesses must also have an electronic version of their Capabilities Statement stored online that is accessible with a link. This is because the SBA and GSA added this additional field to the DSBS and SBA Profiles so that Contracting Officers and Prime Vendors can conduct full market research through these systems and be able to award ‘Direct Award Contracts’ below $250K now that all the information needed in order to make such a decision for each vendor can now be accessed within these systems utilized for such. This linkable “Capabilities Statement’ was just added in early 2024. Most entities are not aware of this new change and especially the importance of having such item in place as quickly as possible. These are the small businesses that are actually be contacted proactively by contracting officers and prime vendors alike.

Creating a one page ‘Capabilities Statement’ is not that difficult. It is important to:

• Keep it simple
• Make it easily legible
• Detailed ‘Narrative Statement’ defining what you do best and what separates you from your competitor’s. Why should they pick your company over similar ones?
• Use a format or template that is widely recognized and accepted as such (DOD preferred formats seem to work best)

Feel free to download and use any of the templates offered here for your own use. The major differences are just the format of each, nothing else really.

If you need additional assistance, just have some basic questions, or would like us to handle this for you (as well as any other help or direction you might need); please reach out to our Help Desk and speak with a CRS (Certified Registration Specialist) Monday-Friday from 9am to 5pm EST.