President Drops by Community Leaders Briefing

We noted our attendance at one of the White House Community Leader Briefings: "This summer, the White House Office of Public Engagement is hosting Community Leaders Briefings. These events, held weekly at the White House, bring together leaders and activists from communities all across the country for an opportunity to discuss common challenges and learn how the government can help them as they work to improve their neighborhoods."

To add to the impact of these events, today the President stopped by the meeting to discuss what his Administration is doing and why they have sponsored these meetings. See the video here:

Why Does the Fed Have So Little Supplier Diversity?

Interview on DiversityInc.com website by Barbara Frankel on Jul 12, 2011 concerning our FOIA request:

We submitted a FOIA to the Fed, a Freedom of Information Act request, a formal request of a federal government agency for information. We asked for information on "minority" business contracting. How much money did the Fed spend with women firms (WBEs), minority firms (MBEs) and others? We were really looking for information on their spending patterns or their support of minority-owned banks. We were basically trying to (expand and) complete the data set concerning their support for foreign banks, foreign corporations, domestic corporations..related to the financial crisis.

What we found was that the Fed has not spent a lot of money with women- and minority-owned firms. In response to our Freedom of Information Act request, the Federal Reserve Board provided data on contract awards for the year 2010, broken out by ethnic and by gender designations. We found that, for example, in 2010, the Fed only spent 1.73 percent of their contracting dollars with minority-owned firms and 6.31 percent with women-owned firms. The total amount of money spent was reported to be $113,109,000. This only covers the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. This does not cover the entire Federal Reserve System.

We are trying to determine how much support was given to minority firms. We sought to compare that to the level of support provided to Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other financial institutions and corporations as a result of the financial crisis.

http://diversityinc.com/article/8456/Why-Does-the-Fed-Have-So-Little-Supplier-Diversity/

New Law Helps Minority and Women Contractors Land Big Deals

New Law Helps Minority and Women Contractors Land Big Deals.

President Obama signs bill that gives our financial services firms a seat at the table. But is it enough?

See: http://www.blackenterprise.com/2011/07/06/new-law-helps-minority-and-women-contractors-land-big-deals/