To my fellow Veteran Business Owners:
It is rare that I have the opportunity to talk about the “internal” workings of supplier diversity programs. We have the support of some of America’s leading senior corporate officers and their supplier diversity and purchasing teams. Over the years we have been taught about the rules, policies, and procedures many of them use to “capture and report” diversity spend.
When National Veteran Business Development Council (NVBDC) started in 2013 there weren’t many corporations that even considered Veterans as a part of their supplier diversity program. Some corporations due to the Federal requirements would report service-disabled veteran owned “spend”, but these reports were directed to the Federal Department that the corporation’s contract was awarded from. This was looked on as a Federal sub-contracting report and was not recorded or tracked as a part of their supplier diversity program. The facts are that many of these self-proclaimed service-disabled veteran owned businesses had no form of certification and in fact the only requirement was that they be listed in the CCR (now known as SAM).
So, it is a big deal when we can announce that one of the members of the Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR) and a NVBDC corporate member has made the change to capture and report their Veteran spend. We are pleased to announce that our corporate member Stellantis has told us that they are now capturing, and reporting Veteran spend as a separate classification and have set a spend goal.
The great news is they have already accepted our challenge to raise the level of SD/VOB spend once they meet their first target. Our intent is to help them find the SD/VOBs to EXCEED THEIR GOAL. What we want our veteran business owners to understand is this capture of Stellantis’s SD/VOB spend will add hundreds of millions of dollars to the reported Veteran spend. It will provide new opportunities and awareness of the skills, services, and products that our Veterans are capable of delivering to our corporate members and their Tier 1 suppliers.
We hope that other corporations will follow the lead of Stellantis and begin capturing and reporting their SD/VOB as a separate classification within their supplier diversity reporting channel. As a Veteran who spent a lot of time in a Jeep, I view this new support from Stellantis with pride and acknowledge this as a form of recognition of our service by Stellantis .
Those who know the National Veteran Business Development Council (NVBDC) history know that for Veterans to be considered for or added to the supplier diversity programs of the corporations, we (Veteran Business Owners) would have to create a certification program that would meet “corporate certification standards.” The NVBDC did that in April 2014 at a meeting with several major corporations and representatives from the SBA, VA, WBENC, NMSDC and members of the Michigan Legislature. Receiving their collective approval, NVBDC launched its certification program while it worked on completing its on-line certification program, released nationally in June 2015. A few weeks after their successful beta-test NVBDC received their official notice from the IRS that their 501(c)3 status was granted. The NVBDC was officially launched and became operational in April 2014.
But, NVBDC was to learn that having a certification program that met corporate standards was only a small first step. Thankfully in 2017 the twenty some members of the Billion Dollar Roundtable named NVBDC as the only accepted SD/VOB certification for corporations to “capture and report” Veteran spend. The NVBDC SD/VOB certification was accepted by the Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR) members as its only certification to meet their veteran owned business “audit standards” to qualify for inclusion in diversity spend. This announcement aligned and served as a “best practice” for other corporations to begin tracking, reporting, and focusing on Veteran business diversity spend.
This was a giant leap forward for all SD/VOBs and we thank the members of the BDR for their leadership and encouragement to have all corporations begin capturing and reporting their Veteran spend.
