The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO^®) is the voice of America’s 10.6 million women-owned businesses. Since 1975, NAWBO has helped women grow their businesses by sharing resources and providing a single voice to shape economic and public policy. NAWBO is the only dues-based national organization representing the interests of all women entrepreneurs across all industries.

The National Association of Women Business Owners started as a meeting of women business owners in the Washington, D.C. area who met to trade information about federal contracts, bank credit, and other business issues. Every few weeks, more women began attending the group meetings. Soon it became clear that there was a great need for a formal organization devoted to helping women business owners; so NAWBO was created.

Today the organization features chapters in almost every metropolitan area in the United States. NAWBO’s strength comes from the diversity of its membership—women who own sole proprietorships as well as those whose companies have hundreds of employees; NAWBO includes women who own construction companies as well as women who are importers, retailers, and service providers in all areas of the country.

Membership is open to sole proprietors, partners, and corporate owners who have day-to-day management responsibility. Active members who live in a chapter area automatically join both their local chapter and the national organization. There also is an at-large chapter for women business owners who live outside existing chapter areas.

The Long Island Chapter

The Long Island Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners was founded and chartered in 1986 by a group of progressive women entrepreneurs who saw a need to enhance the growth of businesses owned by women in Nassau and Suffolk counties in the state of New York . The goals of Long Island chapter members were, and remain:

• To help our members build increasingly strong and successful businesses
• To support the needs of emerging women business owners
• To impact public policy through active participation in the political process
• To encourage and develop leadership skills to move women business owners into positions of influence
• To expand members' participation in the local, state, national, and international arenas, by building on existing successful relationships.