By Herbert L. White
THE CHARLOTE POST
Charlotte’s still open for business to historically underutilized vendors.
The city-backed Charlotte Business Inclusion collaborates with small, minority, and women-owned businesses. In 2023, the city distributed $193 million in contracts with those vendors, up 23% from 2022 and 45% from 2021. More than 1600 businesses are enrolled in CBI, with 1,141 in Mecklenburg County. Another 502 are outside Mecklenburg.
“We are here to advocate,” said Nyema Mathis, CBI’s business inclusion manager. “We are here to serve the members of the community.”
CBI’s role in growing vendor participation during a renewed push by some businesses, states and the Trump administration to roll back or end inclusion programs. Research shows closing racial gaps in entrepreneurship could add up to $5 trillion to the United States economy over the next five years.
“We have to have capacity building for our firms,” Mathis said. Everybody knows that the small business world is what drives the economic impact throughout the area, and our capacity building, we are doing that through CBI University, which will be kicking off [with a] soft launch in the beginning of March of this year; the contract and development program where you’ll have the bonding piece of it. We’re able to equip businesses with different skills and tools and resources to scale their business to thrive.”
CBI deploys 12 staff members and more than 30 liaisons in municipal departments to grow a more inclusive roster of contractors with the goal of helping participants develop sustainable practices and relationships. It also leans into feedback of business owners to shape programming.
“We have a board as well … which is made up of small minority/women businesses throughout the city and the surrounding counties to be that voice, that sounding board,” Mathis said. “What is it that CBI can offer you? How can we help? We advocate a lot for our small businesses to help them on contracting opportunities. Where are those barriers? How can we help remove those barriers?”
Among CBI’s initiatives is certification on local and state vendor lists as well as a contractor development program to support surety bonding, a key requirement for securing participation in major projects like publicly funded renovations of Spectrum Center and Bank of America Stadium.
“We’ve been working with several departments within the city to say, ‘OK, our small businesses are finding that X, Y and Z is a particular hurdle,’” Mathis said. “How can we overcome that hurdle? And we are here to help push them forward. We’re here to guide them on how they can move forward.
“We’re here to help with certification. Our office actually certifies small business owners, minority and women business owners that are certified through the North Carolina HUB office.”
Charlotte is increasing its capacity to support MBEs growth through CBI University, an array of technical support programs and education resources. The city also launched a $40 million Charlotte Small Business Growth Fund last year to offer 2,000 loans of up to $250,000 over the next four years. The funds administered by six community development financial institutions will help contractors boost operations and pursue larger contracts.
“We are trying to assist our vendors with obtaining bonding limits, which has been a huge barrier that has been known for years,” Mathis said. “We were able to create this bonding where we’re here now to say, if you are a certified vendor with the city of Charlotte, you’re eligible for this program, and thankfully, we have been able to increase bond limit sizes for multiple vendors throughout the area, so we are seeing success going forward with what we are doing.”
As Charlotte continues to grow, so will the need for businesses to support it. CBI, Mathis said, is evolving as a path for underutilized vendors to participate in the process.
“That’s the culture of the city, to be ensuring that we are including everybody – not minorities, not women, not small businesses – but everybody into that picture,” she said.
“We were being very intentional on how we were able to set forth these goals and to ensure that we are helping to grow and scale these businesses all at the same time.”
