Shameless Request for Votes!

We’ve applied for a Mission Main Street℠ Grant in Chase’s program that will award twelve (12) small businesses with grants of $250,000 in January 2014.   You can learn about last year’s program and listen to interviews with last year’s winners. Abator, always a WBE, knows getting certified as diversity owned can be challenging for small businesses. And…

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Similar, But Not the Same

Having researched the UCP (Unified Certification Program) for all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands; I thought I had a pretty good handle on what to expect from the certification process. Recently though we’ve experienced some new quirks as we’ve sought certification in additional states as a part of our…

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Inclusion Dividend: Concepts

Earlier this summer, we talked a bit about The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan, with the intent of relating its concepts to supplier diversity; and, how it might apply to us as SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women or Veteran Business Enterprise) businesses.  Chapter three…

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Inclusion Dividend: Business Case

In late June, we talked a bit about The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan, with the intent of relating its concepts to supplier diversity; and, how it might apply to us as SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women or Veteran Business Enterprise) businesses.  Chapter two’s…

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Accountability

We planned a series on The Inclusion Dividend, and we’ll get back to that next post — but we discovered a stunning article about the SBA’s new WOSB (women owned small business) certification that merits comment. Fierce Government reports that NASA audited their fiscal 2010 contracts awarded to self-certified WOSB firms and found that 35…

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Inclusion Dividends

Just finished reading The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan.  It is a well written commentary about the history and contemporary aspects of diversity and inclusion (DI) from a human resources and organizational perspective.  I highly recommend it to all of us who care about…

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Thoughts on Supplier Diversity

It is almost spring, that time of year when many supplier diversity systems send out emails about updating records and providing copies of recently issued or re-issued certifications, again.  I’m not sure whether our targeted clients understand how disheartened a SDMWVBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Minority, Women or Veteran Business Enterprise) can become when we’ve taken great care to research and prepare presentations to show…

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How Long Does It Take?

Last week we fielded three calls about getting diversity certified, and while each caller had very specific questions they all had one in common — how long will it take me to get certified?   These calls come from business owners who want to get certified for a particular reason; usually because an opportunity they want…

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The Rules They Are (maybe) A-Changing

Federal DBE Rules Changing – WANT TO BE HEARD? Did you know that the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is considering changes to its disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) program — and that you can tell them what you think about these changes?  You can read a summary of or a detailed document about the changes…

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Back to Basics ~ Certifications

To celebrate this New Year of 2012, we thought it appropriate to talk about diversity certification again … how it came about and the value of being certified as a business that is minority, women, veteran, disabled, service-disabled or LGBT owned and operated.

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