How-to Guide: Optimizing Pre-Qualification Approaches for Fairness, Speed, and Results

Certifying small, local, and diverse businesses can be an important step toward addressing disparities and increasing equity in government contract spending, but how you implement your certification program will determine whether you succeed. If certification programs are burdensome and confusing, they can actually amplify existing inequities. In this quick read, you’ll learn about the benefits of certification programs, how to make your existing certification program less onerous for businesses, and best practices for setting up a new certification program or piggybacking off another existing certification.

If your government is looking for ways to help small, local, diverse firms receive their fair share of contracting dollars, unbundling large contracts, or breaking them apart into smaller scopes of work that multiple firms can bid on, is a great way to make contracting opportunities available to firms who otherwise wouldn’t be able to compete. In this quick read, you’ll learn why unbundling can be a key strategy to diversify your contracting pool, how to prioritize contracts for unbundling, and best practices for successful service delivery once contracts are in place.