Chamber hopes campaign leads to more contracts with black-owned firms

The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey is challenging top-level executives at corporations to examine their supply chains and issue $50 million in contracts to black-owned firms over the next year.

The African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey is challenging top-level executives at corporations to examine their supply chains and issue $50 million in contracts to black-owned firms over the next year.

Announcing the event today at Bethany Baptist Church, in Lindenwold, chamber President and CEO John Harmon said the challenge asks companies to identify five companies to issue $10 million worth of contracts as a way to help black businesses expand capacity. According to the 2010 census, 94 percent of black businesses in the state are sole proprietorships.

Harmon said that some companies have been working to increase their diverse procurement partners, but “not at the level that is required to make a sustained difference.”

“I would say to those CEOs to challenge their management, challenge their purchasing agents, their procurement officers, those who go out doing community relationships, and ask them, ‘Why have they not engaged the African American Chamber of Commerce in New Jersey at the same level as other mainstream chambers?'”

The National Black Chamber of Commerce is operating an ongoing procurement outreach program, modeled after an experiment done in Indianapolis in the late 1980s. Then-NBCC President Harry C. Alford went to all of the procurement officers in the state of Indiana with lists of black-owned firms, categorized by industry and capacity, with the idea of increasing competition for state bids, thus lowering prices. Within 18 months, state contracts with black-owned companies increased from 1 to 6 percent.

“We’re not saying, ‘do this for the sake of doing this,’ or ‘do this because we asked you to,’ but, ‘do this because it’s good business,'” Harmon said. “African-Americans across the United States as consumers spend in excess of a trillion dollars annually, and the lion’s share of those dollars go to corporations, in terms of purchasing their products or services. … We’re impacting the success, growth and sustainability of these corporations.”