WORCESTER—The city rolled out a new grant initiative to empower small businesses owned by women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups. The Diverse Business Certification Grant Program provides $5,000 grants to help these entrepreneurs obtain critical certifications that can open doors to government contracts and other opportunities.
The $550,000 program is funded through the American Rescue Plan Act and part of a $1.9 million settlement paid to the state by construction companies Gilbane Building Co. and Hunt Construction Group. The two firms were penalized for misrepresenting their use of women and minority-owned subcontractors during the construction of Worcester’s Polar Park baseball stadium.
Peter Dunn, chief development officer in Worcester, said the idea of this grant program came about a few years ago.
“In 2021 and 2022, we did a study about the city of Worcester’s contracting for both goods and services and public construction with underrepresented business owners,” said Dunn. “We partnered with the UMass Donahue Institute. With UMass, they looked at a lot of other government agencies across the Commonwealth, both the city of Boston and the State Division of Capital Asset Management, and the UMass system as well.”
“They gave us some goals to see if they were where they needed to be or if they needed revision. After that, we had revised goals and were able to make sure our goals were consistent across the board,” he added.
Dunn said that after the study was completed, the findings helped guide them forward.
“The study found a disparity between what we know to be a much higher number of eligible businesses in the city compared with the certified database at the time,” he said. “One of the recommendations from that study was to work with the local business community, specifically those eligible, to get more of those eligible businesses certified.”
Marybeth Campbell, chief executive officer of the Worcester Community Action Council, a federally designated anti-poverty agency, said that the new program will help diversify vendors that take care of their weatherization work.
“For us, having a resource like this to help facilitate getting people certified who are more diverse business owners,” she said, “makes the process for us a lot more accessible as a nonprofit that wants to diversify our purchasing power.”
To qualify for the grants, businesses must be located in Worcester and secure certification from the Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Office or another approved third-party organization. Eligible categories include minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned, LGBT-owned and disability-owned businesses among others.
The goal of the newly launched program is not just to increase the total number of certified diverse businesses in the city, but to boost their ability to compete for lucrative government and private sector contracts that are often out of reach without certification. Worcester itself aims to award 15% of contracts to women-owned firms and 10% to minority-owned companies.
“We do a lot of research to look for BIPOC and women-owned businesses and veteran-owned businesses etc. that often go to the state certification list,” said Campbell. “But what we’re realizing is that the certification in and of itself is a barrier for small businesses.”
Certified businesses are also listed in a public database, giving them more visibility to forge partnerships and attract new clients specifically looking for diverse suppliers.
“The fact that the city is helping to certify more diverse businesses will then give us more access to work with those businesses,” Campbell stated. “We have been identifying and contemplating ways that we can be a better partner in the community relative to who we are and how we can work with them from a diverse perspective.”
“We have a lot of purchasing power, so we are always thinking of how to support small businesses that are owned by women, veterans and BIPOC populations,” Campbell added.
“We are already seeing great response after our announcement last week and businesses are getting more interested,” Dunn said. “Hopefully through a lot of those different efforts on a few different fronts, we’ll start to see the certified database for Worcester businesses grow substantially over the next several months.
“We are hoping to help up to 200 businesses with the funding that we have. We are accepting applications on a rolling basis until Nov. 1, but we don’t expect to have all the funds exhausted by the end of the calendar year.”
Applications for the Diverse Business Certification Grant Program are now being accepted. Interested businesses can find full details and application forms on the city’s website. The application form is available as a fillable PDF and can be submitted via email to ARPA@worcesterma.gov.
Matt Olszewski is a freelance content and news writer based in Boston, MA. In his free time, he enjoys running, hiking or skiing. Olszewski is currently finishing up the MPH degree program at Tufts University. He can be reached at mattoskier@gmail.com
