The Winning Season - Session 4 Recap: Building a Capability Statement That Works as Hard as You Do
- Talibah Bayles
- Aug 11
- 3 min read
On Thursday, July 30th, we closed out The Winning Season™ Grant Readiness Academy the way we opened it — in the room, on Zoom, and elbow-deep in the real work. Session 4 brought our four-part series full circle with a hands-on capability statement workshop, and it turned out to be less of a "grant readiness" wrap-up and more of a funding readiness graduation. If you missed this live session, we've got you covered. Here's the full recording:
From Grant Readiness to Funding Readiness
MCWBC Director Talibah Bayles opened by naming exactly what the series had become. What started as a grant readiness academy grew, session by session, into something broader — a full funding readiness academy, covering federal contracting alongside grants and loans. Sandrieka Moore, Business Opportunity Specialist at the SBA Alabama District Office, joined in person to ground the day in that federal contracting lens, alongside MCWBC Project Coordinator Alexis Kimbrough supporting both the in-room and Zoom audiences.
The throughline for the day: if you're ready for a federal contract, you're ready everywhere. Get your capability statement right, and you've built the foundation you need for grants, loans, and contracts alike.
What a Capability Statement Actually Is
Talibah framed it simply: a capability statement is your business's resume. In one page, it tells the reader:
What your organization does
How you do it
How you're aligned to specific industries (via NAICS codes)
Your past performance
And unlike a pitch deck or a website, it has to do all of that in a single, tightly-edited page.
Workshopping It Live — Together
Rather than lecture through the components, Talibah walked the room (literally — she made a point of moving through both the physical room and the Zoom chat) while participants opened their own capability statements, blank or drafted, and built them out in real time.
She modeled the exercise herself, openly noting that her own capability statement was three years overdue for an update — a reminder that this isn't a one-and-done document, even for the person leading the training.
Participants worked through their own company profiles and core competencies live in the chat, and the range of businesses in the room said a lot about who this series reached:
An educational publishing and creative media company building culturally-grounded curriculum and children's media
A literacy nonprofit using phonics-based instruction for underserved communities
A wellness IV hydration and infusion therapy practice
A generational wealth planning and financial empowerment firm
A healthcare workforce training provider offering AHA-certified CPR/BLS/ACLS courses
A real estate investment and property development business
Even a homemade dessert business, refining how to describe its "why" in one line
Seeing that range work through the same one-page format, in the same hour, was a good reminder that capability statements aren't just a federal contracting formality — they're a discipline every kind of business benefits from.
Key Teaching Points From the Session
Keep it to one page. If it's not directly relevant to the opportunity you're pursuing, it doesn't belong on the page.
You can list more than one NAICS code — most businesses legitimately serve more than one industry, and your codes should reflect that.
Be specific, not generic. The language you choose is what makes you stand out among other businesses responding to the same opportunity — vague statements blend in.
Everything on the page should be true and verifiable. As the team put it in the chat: "anything you add, can be googled."
Templates exist so you're not starting from a blank page — Word, Google Docs, and Canva templates were shared to let participants customize and brand their own version.
What's Next
Templates from the session are available to anyone who missed the download — access our MCWBC Google Folder for them.
1-on-1 working sessions are open for booking: calendly.com/hello-mcwbc/30min
To everyone who showed up for one session or all four: thank you for spending your Thursdays getting funding-ready with us. This is exactly the work the Miles College Women's Business Center exists to do.
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