The NMSDC board of directors met at the close of the Minority Business Economic Forum on May 11, 2023, and voted to move to a hybrid certification model that will modernize the certification process and free up additional resources across the network to accelerate its focus on minority business enterprise (MBE) growth and development.
Currently, certification processing takes place at each of the 23 regional councils. In the hybrid model, the national office will handle all certification processing, utilizing the latest technology to ensure consistency and adherence to the highest certification quality that NMSDC is known for. It will continue to include ‘boots on the ground’ through our affiliates regarding site visits but allow them to free up certification resources to be redeployed on activities and programming to accelerate MBE growth.
While this is only the start of our modernization efforts, we are happy to share the benefits of this exciting transformation milestone:
For MBEs:
- One single point of entry into the NMSDC Network with a faster, more intuitive, and frictionless certification application experience that will improve certification cycle time by up to 70%.
- Increased focus at the local level on high-touch, value-added services to accelerate MBE growth.
- Increased relationship cultivation from affiliates producing more meaningful connections with our corporate members.
- A nationwide searchable database of MBEs that will increase relationship building and partnerships amongst our MBEs.
- Focused labor that will allow for a more specialized and quicker review of complex applications.
For Corporate Members:
- Improvements in NMSDC’s gold standard and trusted certification through higher accountability in a shared service model with application processing coupled with ‘boots on the ground’ affiliate site visits which will increase the speed, quality, and consistency of certification while reducing risk.
- A more modern technology base, primed for future process enhancements like AI matching and shared applications with other NGOs.
- Reduced costs across the NMSDC Network, allowing for more corporate member dues to go directly into the growth and development of MBEs, creating a pipeline of corporate-ready MBEs.
- Increased regional focus on recruitment, development, and meaningful business opportunities for MBEs in gap areas.
The hybrid certification model clearly addresses many of the questions that have been expressed to NMSDC by our regional councils:
- Financial: The plan is to reinvest certification fees currently received by the regional councils to better equip them to higher levels of local services.
- Assurance of Integrity: Focused labor will allow for a more specialized process with higher accountability that will increase the quality of certification and reduce risk while mitigating reputational and regulatory risks around data privacy and cybersecurity.
- Relationship: Affiliate councils will continue to play the critical role of relationship cultivation with local minority suppliers, developing and executing strategies to grow MBEs and connecting them with our members.
This important work will evolve NMSDC into an organization capable of accelerating MBE growth. The importance of this change cannot be underscored enough, and we hope you will join us in partnership to build a stronger NMSDC. Change can be deeply unsettling, but we also know "the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new” - Socrates.
And as we move through this implementation, we will continue to provide frequent updates to keep our stakeholders informed of the progress and most importantly to get input along the way.
