I occasionally get an email or phone call from a client about getting registered with System for Award Management (SAM), or perhaps renewing their SAM registration. They have been contacted by, what ostensibly looks like, the official SAM.gov organization to make sure they are properly registered or to make sure that their registrations are updated. These solicitations are nearly always a third party private organization that is designed to extract money from you. I won’t use the word ‘Scam’ as I do expect many of these organizations will likely get you properly registered or maintain your current registration. But they will, at some point, solicit a payment from you for this service. Some of the organizations have been around a long time and are really there to help you ease the process of registration, and catch errors early that might delay your actual government registration. Some of our own service providers will keep track of and maintain your renewals as well, so it is one less thing you have to worry about. However, the landscape is littered with less reputable organizations who may contact you simply to solicit a credit card payment.
Note that getting registered with SAM is always free and no charge to you. Renewing your registrations are also free. You do not have to pay anything to obtain or renew your SAM registration, or any registrations for submitting an SBIR. You can certainly pay someone or an organization to do these registrations/renewals if you wish, but there is no real reason to other than convenience for you. Obtaining and renewing your registration with SAM is easy enough and if you are contacted unsolicited by a third party email, it is likely their only goal is to remove money from you. You will have to give them the exact information you would need to provide to SAM.gov directly anyway, so it doesn’t seem like it would save any time or effort. Remember System for Award Management uses the domain ‘.gov’ so if you see anything else that isn’t SAM.gov then it is not going to be the direct link to the Federal government registration service.
