Mandated Spend – What’s That Mean?

SDMWVLGBTBEs (Small Disadvantaged or Disabled, Minority, Women, Veteran, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered Business Enterprise) hear a lot about mandated diversity goals. But that word, mandate, can be used in multiple ways. A large corporation may have its own internal mandates that are not relevant to any specific job or project.  These mandates, or goals, exist…

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More About Acronyms

In November, we talked about ABC’s of supplier diversity nomenclature.  It is a subject full of abbreviations and acronyms that can be completely confusing to a new SDMWVLGBTBE (Small Disadvantaged or Disabled, Minority, Women, Veteran, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered Business Enterprise) owner.  The earlier post spells out many of the common terms used when…

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ABC’s of Supplier Diversity

If you’re a newbie to the SDMWVLGBTBE (Small Disadvantaged or Disabled, Minority, Women, Veteran, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered Business Enterprise) certification world, your head is likely swimming with the terms and acronyms the rest of the community uses as shorthand.  We thought we’d take a moment to introduce you to the definitions of some important…

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Perspectives

We often talk about the history of supplier diversity, how its roots are buried in the affirmative action/equal employment opportunities that came out of the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations.  Some of our staff actually marched (and sat) in solidarity with Martin Luther King, Jr’s mission at various locations and campuses in the Midwest and…

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You Should Get Certified!

If you’re a DMWVLGBTBE (Disadvantaged or Disabled, Minority, Women, Veteran, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered Business Enterprise), particularly if you’re a small business, you’ve probably heard that advice. We’ve talked about having a strategy when it comes to selecting the certifications that are right for your business, but just jumping right into filling out a…

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Simplify RFP Reviews

SDMWVLGBTBE (Small, Disadvantaged, Disabled, Minority, Women, Veteran, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgendered Business Enterprise) business owners are often faced with responding to a variety of requests for proposals (RFPs), requests for quote (RFQ), Invitation to Bid (ITB), or Invitation to Qualify (ITQ) by our commercial or government clients.  If you are a Not-for-Profit, this might be…

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#WomenWOW

Last month we got an email asking us to write a blog entry in support of “#WomenWOW, a worldwide pledge to support female-owned businesses and causes that’ll take place on December 2.” So here we are, struggling with the objective of picking “a strong female role model to showcase.”  Truth be told, there are many,…

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Geek Strong

If you’ve been reading our posts, it may be apparent we’re readers (for some of us, books are the drug of choice).  So what do quirky actress Felicia Day [author of You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost)] and social scientist Brené Brown [author of Rising Strong] have of interest to SDMWVLGBTBE (Small, Disadvantaged/Disabled, Minority,…

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Site Visit Preparations

A Little History: In the past, SDMWVBEs (Small, Disadvantaged/Disabled, Minority, Women, or Veteran Business Enterprises) were certified on faith that owners provided truthful information on application forms and that they really, actually owned and operated their own businesses. Unfortunately, in the early days there was a fair amount of fraud, so the certification process itself…

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What’s In Store for 2015?

Happy, happy, merry, merry and all of that holiday jazz with Best Wishes for 2015 from all of us at Abator and GetDiversityCertified.com. A famous Dickens’ character says “May I have some more, please”? That’s what we want – more diversity in the workplace and market place. And, if recent news articles are any indication,…

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