What is WBENC?
Supporting small, minority, and women-owned businesses is something our culture is getting better at. Particularly during the holidays, more and more consumers, looking for a more personal shopping experience, are turning to their communities instead of shopping at big box stores. But showing support for these businesses shouldn’t stop after the “giving season” dies down.
SPOKE612 has been a Certified Minority Women-Owned business for nearly 5 years. This blog marks the first post in a short series on WBENC and the certification itself.
WBENC was founded in 1997 and “is the nation’s leader in women’s business development and the leading third-party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women” (WBENC). While WBENC has made tremendous impacts over the last few decades, the impetus to begin certifying businesses as minority, women, veteran, and LGBT-owned traces back to the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. During the movement, a supplier diversity program began in the United States with a desire to give small businesses the ability to work for, and with, large corporations. Supplier diversity encourages giant companies, like General Motors and General Mills, to create supplier contracts with these historically underutilized businesses.
In 1978, Law 95-507 established a program to encourage government contractors to include minority-owned businesses in their supply chains. This law made major revisions to the Small Business Act which would later become the Small Business Administration and made it possible for these small and historically disadvantaged businesses to compete with large contractors who typically win the contracts of large companies.
Today, many corporations have Supplier Diversity Programs. It is essential to become certified by a registered third party certifier to ensure corporations that a business is minority-, women-, veteran, or LGBT-owned. WBENC, specific to certifying women-owned businesses, is one of many organizations that supply third-party certifications.
Now that SPOKE612 is certified by WBENC, we are finding that companies with supplier diversity needs are far more likely to utilize it in their supply chain for purchasing goods. These corporations are not only able to purchase goods, but also services. This is exciting because more mainstream companies are finding they can spend their supplier diversity quotas within their marketing budget with women-owned businesses, like SPOKE612. We’ve seen so much change over the last few years and we are so excited for what’s to come!
Check back in to see the next two posts on WBENC and how to become certified!
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