Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise

Supplier diversity refers to the use of minority-owned businesses as suppliers, and a supplier diversity program is a proactive business program which encourages such use within an organisation's supply chain. Minority-owned includes black and minority ethnic business ownership, women owned, veteran owned, LGBT-owned , service disabled veteran owned, historically underutilized business, and Small Business Administration (SBA)-defined small business concerns. It is not directly correlated with supply chain diversification, although utilizing more vendors may enhance supply chain diversification. Supplier diversity programs recognize that sourcing products and services from previously under-used suppliers helps to sustain and progressively transform a company's supply chain, thus quantitatively reflecting the demographics of the community in which it operates by recording transactions with diverse suppliers. United States Paul D. Larson links the establishment of supplier diversity concerns to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. Diverse- and women-owned business enterprises are among the fastest-growing segments of the U.S. economy. Diverse-owned businesses generated an estimated $495 billion in annual revenue in 1997 and employed nearly 4 million workers, while women-owned firms employed about 19 million people and generated $2.5 trillion in annual sales. Alongside the Women-Owned Small Business Program, the US Small Business Administration also operates an Economically Disadvantaged Women Owned Small Business (EDWOSBs) program for preferential award of federal contracts in certain industries.