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Central Research, Inc.

Vendor or contractor

PPP · EIDL · Other programs
Type
Company or group
Role
Vendor or contractor
Programs
PPP, EIDL, Other programs
Updated
  • Type: Federal records, collections, and improper-payments contractor; SBA 8(a)/HUBZone-eligible firm.
  • Legal entities: Central Research, Inc. (CRI); SBA Mentor-Protégé JV Goldschmitt-CRI LLC (8(a), SDVOSB, HUBZone; Virginia suburbs).
  • Founded: 2002 (incorporated Lowell, AR, 2007).
  • HQ: Lowell, Arkansas; D.C.-metro office.
  • Leadership: Johnny Dillard (founder); Scott Dillard (co-founder, later executive chairman); Bobby McKinnon (president, then CEO from October 2021); Andra Grasis (President and CEO from February 2025), per company announcements and Talk Business & Politics.
  • Role in pandemic relief: Via Goldschmitt-CRI JV, co-built and operated SBA's PPP forgiveness platform, the RRF "Grant Restaurant Platform," and a COVID-EIDL SaaS platform; not a lender, never approved or funded loans.

Pandemic-role map

  • Reader shorthand: federal relief-platform contractor through Goldschmitt-CRI.
  • What Central Research did for applicants: did not lend or decide eligibility itself; its joint venture supplied software and operational infrastructure applicants, lenders, and SBA used to move PPP forgiveness, RRF, and COVID-EIDL workflows.
  • What Central Research sold to government: platform build/operation, cloud workflow, data interfaces, call-center/support functions, and program dashboards through SBA contracts.
  • Where responsibility sat: SBA owned the programs and award decisions; Goldschmitt-CRI operated key systems supporting those programs.

Before the pandemic (2002–early 2020)

Central Research was founded by Johnny Dillard with his son Scott; the company traces its founding to 2002 and was incorporated in Lowell, Arkansas, in 2007 (company site).

CRI provides records and document management, research, call-center and debt-collection services, and improper-payments and IT work to federal, state, and commercial clients. CRI is an 8(a)/HUBZone-eligible contractor with a Washington, D.C.-metro office alongside its Lowell headquarters.

Scott Dillard ran the company after his father's death in 2018 (Talk Business & Politics).

During the pandemic (2020–2021)

The Goldschmitt-CRI JV and the platform portfolio

As the joint-venture partner of Goldschmitt and Associates, CRI built and ran the software SBA used to process and forgive Paycheck Protection Program loans, and then the platforms behind the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.

The vehicle was Goldschmitt-CRI LLC, an SBA Mentor-Protégé joint venture between Marc Goldschmitt's Sterling, Virginia firm and Central Research, structured as an 8(a), service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone joint venture. Goldschmitt-CRI's pandemic portfolio, by federal award value:

(Award figures are USAspending.gov net obligations)

The forgiveness platform let borrowers and lenders submit forgiveness applications, validated the financial calculations, produced program dashboards, ran on a FedRAMP-certified AWS environment, and already interfaced with SBA's Capital Access Financial System.

The July 2021 sole-source extension

In a July 2021 action extending the forgiveness platform, SBA stated in a redacted justification-and-approval notice that it had conducted market research in June 2020 and identified Goldschmitt-CRI as the only vendor that could supply the cloud-based, commercial-off-the-shelf platform meeting the needs of the government, borrowers, and lenders. The potential 12-month award value was $136.4 million.1

GAO's review of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (GAO-22-105442) says SBA contracted with Goldschmitt-CRI for the application portal, that the joint venture subcontracted portal development to Summit Technologies, Inc., and that the contract included a call center. SBA tested the portal with 2,600 potential applicants picked at random from restaurant-industry PPP borrowers from April 25 to May 2, 2021. It had expected 70 percent of applications to arrive through point-of-sale vendors; about 6 percent did, which officials put down to technical problems at those vendors in the first days and the ease of use of SBA's own platform.

Five SBA contracts, none competed

SBA's first forgiveness-platform contract with the joint venture, 73351020C0022, was signed June 22, 2020 without competition on grounds of urgency; USAspending shows nothing obligated on it (award record). Contract 73351020C0027 replaced it on September 3, 2020, also without competition, for urgency. Its record says the first "had to be cancelled due to system and reporting issues that could not be resolved without a new contract being generated" (award record). That time-and-materials contract ran to July 9, 2021. The restaurant grant platform (April 13, 2021 to April 12, 2022) and the COVID-19 EIDL closing platform (October 28, 2021 to June 8, 2022) were also awarded without competition for urgency. The July 2021 follow-on, a fixed-price contract to July 9, 2022, is recorded as authorized by statute. On the four funded contracts SBA obligated $406.2 million, and USAspending shows all of it paid.

The joint venture reported subcontracts on each. On the July 2021 follow-on it reported four subawards totaling $115,305,000 of the $136,440,000 (award record). The largest, $110,260,273.80 for "licenses for a software solution for loan forgiveness processing," went to Central Research. The others were $1,672,750 to Goldschmitt and Associates, the other member, for operations and maintenance; $2,647,250 to Summit Technology Consulting Group; and $724,726.20 to Veterans Professional Services Group for call-center support (USAspending.gov subaward records for PIID 73351021C0007, retrieved September 27, 2026). GAO's report names the portal subcontractor Summit Technologies, Inc.; neither record says whether the two are one firm. On the forgiveness contract before it, eight reported subawards came to $36,338,148.84 of $182,352,894.43.

SBA's Inspector General reviewed the forgiveness process in Report 22-09 (February 28, 2022). SBA opened the platform to lenders on August 10, 2020, and the Inspector General called it "adequate to support SBA's loan review process." Its finding was addressed to SBA: of more than 3.1 million forgiveness applications processed, SBA had missed the 90-day deadline to pay lenders on 107,168 loans totaling $66.4 billion as of May 12, 2021, including 98.2 percent of loans of $2 million or more (SBA OIG Report 22-09).

Their own relief

Central Research, Inc. took a Paycheck Protection Program loan of its own: $6,740,700, approved April 6, 2020 and forgiven as of August 5, 2021, per SBA loan data.2 Nothing in the public data indicates the loan was improper.

(The borrower is Central Research, Inc. of Lowell, AR, not other similarly named entities in the PPP data.)

Leadership transition: Scott Dillard to McKinnon

In October 2021, Scott Dillard handed the CEO title to Bobby McKinnon, who had joined CRI as president in January 2020, and moved to executive chairman; Andra Grasis was named Chief Operations Officer (company announcement). Scott Dillard died on April 20, 2022 (Talk Business & Politics).

After the pandemic (2022 – present)

Neither Dillard was charged with or accused of any wrongdoing.

In February 2025, Andra Grasis was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer (company leadership page).

The Goldschmitt-CRI joint venture remains the vehicle of record for the firm's SBA platform work. Central Research continues to operate from Lowell under its federal records, collections and improper-payments lines of business (company site).

An entity named Goldschmitt-CRI-2, LLC, registered at the same Reston, Virginia address as Goldschmitt-CRI, holds an Education Department contract for Perkins Loan servicing. The contract, a small-business set-aside, was signed March 11, 2025 after three offers and runs to June 26, 2034 (award record). An order under it, which begins with phasing in the contractor's performance, runs to November 30, 2026. As of September 2026 its record shows $17,979,820.57 obligated and $10,477,356.07 paid (award record).

Where Central Research doesn't appear

No criminal charge, civil fraud case, or enforcement action has been identified against Central Research, Inc. or Goldschmitt-CRI LLC in connection with the PPP, EIDL, or RRF platforms.

Current posture (as of mid-2026)

Privately held Arkansas contractor under CEO Andra Grasis (company site).

Sources

Primary documents in this archive

External references

Notes

  1. GovCon Wire (July 27, 2021), citing SBA's redacted justification-and-approval notice. ↩
  2. SBA PPP loan-level FOIA data, loan 5803997005, Central Research, Inc., Lowell, AR (lender Arvest Bank); also shown in ProPublica's Tracking PPP database. ↩
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