News Release
All roads led to Tallahassee on March 21, 2014, for black businesses during the 2014 Florida Consortium of Black Businesses (FLCBB) Black Business Day and Bus Trip to Tallahassee, held in conjunction with Florida Conference of Black State Legislators Town Hall Meeting, to articulate the issues of black businesses to Florida’s black legislators.
FLCBB members convened on Tallahassee to meet with the lawmakers to implore their support, action and advocacy on issues affecting the 187,000 black businesses across the state. This was an opportunity for black businesses to have their issues heard and addressed by the Florida Conference of Black State Legislators, which is the first step in successfully affecting policy and administrative changes by the legislature, cabinet officials, Governor’s office, state department officers and private corporations throughout Florida.
FLCBB presented an 11 point slate of priority issues from its members. The first priority is for the State of Florida to objectively assess black business participation over the last 5 years. The results of the disparity study will identify gaps in the award of state contracts, and consequently, opportunities to increase the participation of Florida-based minority businesses and black businesses with the State of Florida.
Other priorities include the streamlining of the certification process for all businesses, revising and requiring the implementation of diversity goals, better forecasting of state contracting opportunities to allow companies more time to prepare for RFPs, greater transparency in reporting the contracts awarded by state agencies, and greater access to additional and more affordable capital for minority businesses through the Black Business Loan Program and increasing capital to the Florida Black Business Investment Corporations.
Additionally, FLCBB members advocated for increasing the resources for the Florida Office of Supplier Diversity to conduct outreach, increasing contract awards to black owned businesses and requiring ethnic diversity as an essential objective in the appointment on state appointed boards. Full listing of the FLCBB Top Priorities can be read online at www.flcbb.com
FLCBB is a collective group of black business owners and advocacy organizations. Collectively, FLCBB brings a united voice of the 187,000 black business owners in Florida to promote business opportunities and advocate for programs and services to strengthen and sustain existing businesses.
“While Florida trends towards having smaller businesses as a whole across all races, Florida’s black businesses lag behind black businesses nationally in both average sales and employees. The percent of Black Florida businesses is 7% less than the percent of Black individuals residing in the state of Florida. The time has come to proactively strengthen and sustain black business in the State of Florida,” said Veronica Anderson, Esq., Chairman, FLCBB and President of Anderson and Associates, P.A.
Business owners and small business advocates sometimes bemoan that black owned businesses are not speaking out about policies and issues that create barriers to their growth and sustainability. The FLCBB wants to address the absence of voices on a statewide level and advocate for more business opportunities in the private and public sectors. “Anecdotally, it seems that the economy, business practices, lack of access to capital and other factors have resulted in the slow growth or the demise of some black owned businesses; but no one is actually documenting this observation,” said Anderson.
“A good goal for the black community is to continue to strive to get business ownership percentage equal to population percentage. The benefits are endless. Statistically speaking, we know that Black companies are more likely to hire Black workers thus employing and sustaining more Florida jobs and families. Sewing these seeds now will make for a stronger Florida tomorrow because entrepreneurship provides opportunities for greater inter-generational wealth transfer,” Anderson added.
The FLCBB activities were sponsored in part by the membership as well as Enterprise Florida, Inc. Barnes Ferland and Associates, Inc. WBQ Design & Engineering, Inc. and the National Association of Black Women in Construction.
This consortium of businesses is open to all Florida black businesses and to all advocating partners, both private and public that all want to “open business opportunities to Florida’s black businesses.” For more information including the complete listing of the FLCBB Top Priority Issues, visit: www.flcbb.com
