A Booster Shot for Gay-Owned Businesses

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Over the past 10 years, IBM has worked with more than 50 GLBT-owned companies, for contracts worth more than $25 million, says Drucker. The company aims to have at least one diversity supplier engaged in each request for proposal.

The NGLCC models its certification process, which costs business owners about $300, on those used by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (with which it has an agreement that makes dual certification less onerous) and the National Minority Supplier Development Council. The first hurdle is to verify that the company is at least 51%-owned by a minority, and the second is to prove that the business owner is the minority he or she claims to be. "We had to think outside of the box: What are tangible ways to tie the applicant to GLBT status?" says Nelson. In addition to site visits, the NGLCC asks for documentation that might show domestic partnerships, civil union or marriage of the principal, awards from GLBT organizations, or, in the case of transgender individuals, surgical records.

For 13-person, $5 million employee performance consulting firm Neil Cerbone Associates in South Orange, N.J., it took one staff person about an hour a day for a month to get the required documents together. Besides hosting an on-site visit to prove that it was fully functional, the company needed to produce letters of recommendation from three clients testifying to the quality of its work and that Neil Cerbone, the owner, is gay. "If there is someone who owned a business and is gay, and the clients did not know this, it would be difficult," Cerbone says. That's a problem on the corporate side as well. "The biggest challenge in finding qualified, diverse suppliers unfortunately is that many business owners are reluctant to come out," says Drucker.

Cerbone says the certification, which he got in 2007, hasn't led to any work yet, but it has led to talks with procurement executives at Wells Fargo Bank, and networking opportunities with other large companies that participate in the program. "It is a long process and we are not disillusioned," Cerbone says. He reminds other GLBT-owned companies that networking with procurement executives does not in itself produce business, even though it does open doors to those who can award contracts. That may be only a small step, but it is, at least, a step.

Quittner is a staff writer for BusinessWeek in New York.

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