SPOKE612 is a WBENC Certified Women-Owned Business.

What is a Certified Minority Women-Owned Business?

The largest certifier of women-owned businesses in the U.S. is The Women's Business Enterprise National Council or WBENC. The thorough process of WBENC Certification validates that a business is at least 51 percent owned, controlled, operated, and managed by a woman or women formed as a legal entity in the United States. The WBENC Certification is a world-class certification standard accepted by more than 1,000 corporations representing America’s most prestigious brands, in addition to many states, cities, and government entities2.

What is Supplier Diversity?

A diverse supplier is, in the broadest sense, a business owned and operated by an individual or group that is part of a traditionally underrepresented or underserved group. The history of supplier diversity in the United States is firmly rooted in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the early 1950s, Congress created The Small Business Act which became the Small Business Administration. In the late 1970s, an amendment to that act, Public Law 95-507, established a program to encourage government contractors to include minority-owned businesses in their supply chains.

Today, many corporations employ supplier diversity programs. In order for an organization to record and report diverse supplier spending, it is important to ensure that its suppliers are certified through third-party certification agencies. Along with women-owned businesses, other large groups falling under the supplier diversity umbrella include minority-owned businesses, disabled-owned businesses, veteran-owned businesses, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender-owned businesses (GLBTQ.)

How can SPOKE612 help you?

If you have a supplier diversity program, adding SPOKE612 to your list of minority suppliers will allow your department to increase its diversity spending and achieve its corporate budgetary benchmarks.

1 Supplier.io, What is supplier diversity and why is it important?, 2 WBENC.org/about-wbenc, 3 Harvard Business Review, Consumer Behavior, Why you need a Supplier-Diversity Program