2024 RFP

GRANT GUIDELINES

TIMELINE

  • Eligibility Survey & Planning Grant RFP Release: September 4, 2024

  • Virtual Information Session for Applicants: September 19, 2024, 11:30 am ET; register via Zoom

  • Applications Due: Rolling submissions, ending no later than October 16, 2024 at midnight EST 

  • Finalist Interviews (virtual): January 13-24, 2025

  • Funding Decisions: Week of February 12, 2025

  • Announcements: by March 2025 

  • Agreements and Initial Award Disbursements: by March 2025

Note: Applicants may direct questions to inquiries@nysmallbusinessfunders.org. In addition to the information session in September, the Collective will also publish FAQ on the website to share and reflect questions submitted from applicants. 

HOW TO APPLY

After reviewing this information, if you believe your project is a good fit for this grant, please visit www.nysmallbusinessfunders.org and click on the “apply” link which will take you to the online application portal, beginning with an Eligibility Survey. The website also has links to an Application Preview, Scoring Rubric, and other information.

BACKGROUND

More than 227,000 small businesses employ 1.6 million workers In New York City alone, creating jobs, opportunity, and wealth. A 2020 research study on local small business needs conducted by Next Street found that an estimated 68% of revenue generated by local businesses stays within the community, making them a vital economic driver. However, a capital gap of $45 billion annually exists and the gap is magnified for entrepreneurs of color, for whom equitable access to social, financial, and knowledge capital is often out of reach.

The NY Small Business Funders Collective (SBFC or “The Collective”) is a group of philanthropic entities coming together to strengthen the local small business ecosystem across the New York region. Members of the Collective share the belief that entrepreneurship is a powerful lever for innovation, community vibrancy, and economic development. Through pooled grantmaking, the Collective aims to expand opportunities for historically excluded entrepreneurs to thrive.

With a commitment to increasing equitable access to social, financial, and knowledge capital for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian & Pacific Islander and other historically excluded small business owners in the region, the Collective is launching its second Request for Proposals.

PROBLEM OVERVIEW

We know that…

  1. Corporations pledging to increase supplier diversity in 2020 and beyond have struggled to put those commitments into practice. According to the National Minority Supplier Development Council, certified minority-owned businesses generate more than $400 billion in annual revenue. However, many companies have struggled to implement the foundational changes needed to support robust supplier-diversity programs, devoting insufficient resources to the effort, limiting their programs to Tier 1 suppliers, or failing to incorporate the vision of a diverse supply chain into the organizational ethos.

  2. While diverse supply chains benefit us all by encouraging business innovation, reducing risk, increasing sustainability, and better reflecting our communities, only 2% of the value of all new City of New York contracts and purchase orders were awarded to minority- and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBE) in fiscal year 2022. (NYC.gov)

  3. Small businesses were eligible for nearly $560 billion in federal contracts for goods and services in FY2020. Yet challenges abound for small businesses seeking to obtain them, including securing surety bonds, accessing capital, and demonstrating adequate experience and capacity. If businesses received federal contracts proportionally, “minority-owned businesses would have received $64 billion more in federal contracts in FY2020, and women-owned businesses would have received an extra $77 billion.” (McSwigan, 2022) 

  4. Each year, the City of New York awards contracts totaling $43 billion. Despite laws and programs aimed at increasing the number of M/WBEs doing business with the City, “the share of City dollars going to diverse businesses remains woefully small.” Further, the average dollar value of contracts is significantly lower than those of their counterparts, meaning M/WBEs are “jumping higher hurdles for lower returns.” The average value of a new contract registered in FY22 to a non-certified firm was $5 million, nearly eight times larger than the average value of a new contract registered to a M/WBE, which was just $679 thousand. (NYC.gov) 

  5. Recent court decisions and legal action around the country have had a chilling effect on those providing services seeking to redress historic imbalances and spur opportunity for all. Rulings such as the June 2023 Affirmative Action SCOTUS decision and March 2024 Federal Court ruling in Texas regarding the MBDA are making it more difficult for entrepreneurs to access needed and targeted programs.

  6. Renewed attention is being given to contractual, procedural, and legislative fixes that can secure past victories and pave new ground. In this regard, the City of New York is leading in many ways, including the City’s first Chief Business Diversity Officer, redoubling focus on implementing recommendations from its Disparity Report, and issuance of the Mayor’s Executive Order 26, which expands opportunities to work with the City and enables M/WBEs to compete for larger contracts more effectively. 

A SOLUTIONS STRATEGY

Building on a track record of collaboration, innovation, and partnership, the Collective is embarking on a new round of grantmaking with supplier diversity as its focus. As done in two previous rounds, the Collective seeks to discover and support proximate, community-led initiatives involving a wide range of cross-sector players. 

This Request for Proposals aims to reveal and fund innovative solutions in procurement that diversify supplier networks in the city, increase supply chain localization, and increase the number of historically excluded small business owners seeking and securing contracts with purchasers and anchor institutions in NYC. 

In detail,

  • The Collective is providing one year of flexible funding to partnerships led by nonprofit organizations;

  • Partnerships should be working with and serving small businesses (annual receipts up to $5 million);

  • Partnerships must be led by nonprofit organizations, who serve as the primary applicant, and may include corporate anchors, other nonprofits, and/or city and state agencies

In the application, you will be asked to further detail characteristics of the small businesses your partnership serves, including industry, sector, and annual receipts.

Doing Business Together

While the Collective believes that small business entrepreneurs and those that serve them can proactively address challenges that affect their ability to compete for contracts, it feels strongly that equal attention should be paid to the anchor institutions and government agencies that issue contracts and procure goods & services (the “buyers”). The Collective seeks to innovate around systems change and shift perceptions that the supplier diversity issue should be solved by vendors, suppliers, and entrepreneurs (the “sellers”) alone. Instead, our 2024 RFP seeks to address both sides of this equation, spurring creative partnerships between buyers, sellers, and nonprofit entities that help create high-capacity vendors through joint ventures, cooperatives, guilds, and other partner models. 

To be eligible, a 501c3 nonprofit must apply and lead the partnership. Partners to the lead applicant may include, but are not limited to: 

  • A corporate partner (ie. buyers who contract with diverse small businesses)

  • A public agency (ie. buyers that contract with diverse small businesses)

  • Small businesses 

  • Nonprofit partner(s) 

  • A cohort of buyers, sellers, and allies 

Applicants may prioritize one or some of the following solution areas in support of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, AAPI, women, and other historically excluded entrepreneurs in the five boroughs of NYC:

  1. CAPITAL ACCESS: Extending, designing, and/or growing mechanisms for delivering inclusive capital for businesses, particularly working capital.

  2. BONDING & INSURANCE: Providing referrals to ensure small businesses more effectively access the required bonding and insurance needed to bid for contracts (may include advancing to Tier 1 or Prime status).

  3. READINESS & CERTIFICATION: Offering personalized analysis and training to small businesses interested in securing contracts. Also includes buyer/seller mentoring and relationship-building.

  4. CAPACITY-BUILDING: Assisting small businesses in taking their enterprises to scale to successfully bid for public and private contracts. Similarly, educating and providing support to buyers about moving past the “lowest cost provider” and optimizing their spend with diverse suppliers, using BSOs as a conduit.

  5. OUTREACH/NETWORKING: Building communication channels that reach to the community level so under-invested small business owners connect with contract opportunities. Also includes efforts to overcome “insider” language and structures in procurement.

  6. DATA COLLECTION & BENCH-MARKING: Design, amplify, and share emerging tools such as Artificial Intelligence for buyers to measure progress towards supplier-diversity goals.

The Collective also welcomes additional interventions beyond the list above.

The Collective is also interested in the “disparity within a disparity” noted by the City’s Chief Business Diversity Officer Michael Garner where Black, Hispanic, and Native American owned firms are vastly underutilized in a certification designed to help them. To that point, only 14.94% of M/WBE contracts in FY22 were awarded to Black, Hispanic, and Native American owned firms.

Our desire is for the nonprofit partner leading the application to operate at the local level, and be intimately familiar with the challenges Black, Latinx, Indigenous, AAPI, women, and other historically excluded entrepreneurs face in their community. Together, the lead and partner organizations will address one or more of the six solutions areas mentioned above. Proposals will be evaluated using a scoring rubric, which is available as part of the proposal packet.

A competitive proposal to the SBFC will address specific barriers that small business firms led by people of color, women, and other historically excluded business owners experience as they seek to do business with anchor institutions such as corporations and government agencies. Proposals can address any part of the life cycle of a procurement relationship. Similarly, proposals can address any aspect of the supply chain continuum.

We are most interested in hearing about your unique approach to amplifying and elevating historically excluded small business owners in the procurement space, and what data/research grounds your work. Through this RFP process, the Collective is interested in learning about persistent pain points and innovative solutions to address them. 

The Collective is committed to learning and positively impacting the small business ecosystem in NYC, and our intention is to fully engage with the cohort of grantees to discover and learn about new ideas, solutions, pathways to access in the realm of supplier diversity. Awardees will work with the Collective to select measurable objectives for their project. Awardees will also participate in a learning cohort facilitated by the Collective for the period of one year, offering the opportunity for peer networking and shared best practices among lead and partner organizations. 

Modeling the collaboration we seek from applicant groups, the Collective exists through the commitment of its eight member funders, JPMorgan Chase, M&T Bank, Principal Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, Santander Bank, MetLife Foundation, BankUnited, and Capital One, who themselves are engaged in a participatory learning and impact journey.

What We’ll Do

Terms: One-Year Partnership Grants

Size of Awards: Expected to range between $100,000-$250,000

  1. Award disbursements are anticipated to be in 1-2 installments, with interim and final reporting required.

  2. The Collective seeks to fund one project per borough but remains open to organizations that serve multiple boroughs and will ultimately fund those projects that best fit the grant guidelines.  

  3. Preference will be given to lead organizations that are a 501c3 with diverse leadership that represents the populations they serve. We are also interested in partner organizations with diverse leadership teams.

  4. Applicants must demonstrate ability to identify and/or foster a collaboration with partner organizations that serve small businesses owned by Black, Latinx, AAPI, Indigenous, women, and other historically excluded entrepreneurs. 

Who’s Eligible:

To be eligible for a grant award, the LEAD APPLICANT must be: 

  • A nonprofit organization with evidence that it (a) has been recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as an organization described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Code; (b) is fiscally sponsored by a Section 501(c)(3) organization; (c) or is a governmental unit within the meaning of Section 170(c)(1) of the Code;

  • Located within and/or primarily serving residents of Bronx, Kings, Richmond, New York, Queens counties.

Additionally:

  • While the lead applicant must be structured as a 501c3, partner organizations are not required to be structured as a 501c3. Examples of collaborations are mentioned above in the Solutions strategy section. 

  • All industries and business sectors within the small business ecosystem are welcome to apply.

Who’s Exempt/Ineligible Uses:

  • Organizations may only serve as a lead applicant for one partnership, but members of a partnership may be included in more than one application

  • Partnerships may include capital providers, but funding from this grant may not be used for direct lending or capital purposes.

  • This grant opportunity is primarily intended to support programmatic service delivery partnerships. 

  • A secondary purpose to effect policy and systems change is welcome, but proposals that are solely focused on policy or systems change will not be considered. 

  • Funds may not be used for any direct lobbying activity or inherently religious activities or programs.