The University is committed to expand opportunities and spend with businesses certified by the State of Washington Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises (OMWBE). Procurement Services goals and practices encourage increased opportunities for OMWBE certified businesses.
Governor Inslee’s strategic framework, Results Washington, includes a goal to increase state agency and educational institution utilization of OMWBE certified small businesses in contracts and procurement to the following percentages:
- Minority-owned businesses: 10%
- Women-owned businesses: 6%
- Veteran-owned businesses: 5%
- University spend for 2024 with OMWBE certified firms was $$21,982,192M spend in public works and procurement, not including Procard spend). Details available at: 3600_University_of_Washington_FY24_Diversity_Report.pdf
State agencies and educational institutions are required by State law to adopt plans to increase the participation of certified minority and women-owned businesses. To this end, Procurement Services, in collaboration with the the Foster Consulting and Business Development Center engage in outreach activities, both internally and externally to bring visibility and awareness to both the business and university communities.
We are actively increasing opportunities for diverse suppliers to do business with the university; in addition, we are reviewing our internal mechanisms for collecting data.
| Goal | Progress |
| Increase internal visibility of departmental goals for diverse supplier participation. | Implemented and ongoing. |
| Increase diverse supplier opportunities by advertising solicitations via WEBS. | Implemented and ongoing. |
| Facilitate meetings between UW commodity specific buyers and suppliers. | Implemented and ongoing. Host monthly supplier orientation sessions |
| Ensure our diversity supplier data is accurate. | We are the process of finalizing our data reporting methodology. |