Staten Island Event Promises MWBE Know-How—We’ll See Who Shows Up

Efforts to cultivate minority- and women-owned businesses on Staten Island reflect broader shifts in how New York nurtures its entrepreneurial ecosystem.

For every 100 businesses that line New York City’s boulevards, fewer than 22 are owned by minorities or women—despite these groups comprising the city’s majority. The gap yawns widest in places like Staten Island, long overshadowed by its megacity siblings, where opportunity is both tantalising and elusive. These disparities are not lost on policymakers or commercial groups, who now seek to engineer a correction of historic proportions.

On June 13th, the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the city’s Department of Small Business Services (SBS), will host a “MWBE Opportunities” event—free to aspiring and established business owners from minority and women backgrounds. The plan: tutorials on how to obtain city MWBE certification (the difficult-to-pronounce badge needed to access contracts), practical networking with officials, and hard-nosed advice about pitching for government work. More than 100 such city-sponsored events will roll out in 2024, but the attention is noteworthy for Staten Island, often bypassed by municipal largesse.

The event offers a rare bridge to public procurement. City agencies are legally obliged to steer some of their tens of billions in contracts to MWBEs—a total worth more than $6 billion since 2014, says SBS. But the system is anything but streamlined: the process deters all but the most persistent. Of New York’s roughly 200,000 small businesses, fewer than 10,000 are certified as MWBEs, according to city data. Awareness remains patchy, with many proprietors unaware of what they are missing.

In the short run, the Chamber’s gathering is a nod to the borough’s ambition and a salve for some of its economic woes. Staten Island saw a 22% jump in minority- and women-owned enterprises from 2017 to 2022, but the absolute numbers remain puny—less than 2,200 MWBE firms on the island, by recent tallies, many clustered in personal services or construction. City contracts, even the smallest, can serve as a lifeline in a market battered by high rents and tepid foot traffic.

The longer-term hope, at least as fancied by city officials, is loftier. Infusions of capital and attention are meant not just for MWBEs’ balance sheets; they aim to lubricate commercial mobility and erode a legacy of exclusions, both real and perceived. Janet Dugo, the Chamber’s president, says the event targets not only established shopkeepers but also first-timers unsure where to start. The initiative is as much about demystification as growth.

For New York’s broader economy, the potential gains are not merely rhetorical. Research by the Center for an Urban Future suggests MWBEs generate net new jobs at a buoyant clip when given substantial government work. Yet, as ever with public procurement, fortunes wax and wane with bureaucracy’s tides. Critics note that most MWBE contracts are small, with the largest slices rarely falling to local startups. Recent audits suggest only a third of city-certified MWBEs win contracts.

Politically, the cause enjoys bipartisan cheerleading—few elected officials are reckless enough to suggest a stance against small business or inclusivity. The city council routinely presses administrations to hike MWBE quotas; Mayor Eric Adams touts related policy packages with the force of a campaign. But the political performance obscures an awkward truth: progress is measured in inches, not miles, and procurement czars can do only so much amid citywide fiscal tightening.

Staten Island by example, national trend

New York City hardly stands alone in this respect. Cities from Houston to San Diego trumpet their MWBE initiatives with mixed, sometimes lacklustre, results. San Francisco, for one, reported fewer than 5% of contracts went to MWBEs in the last fiscal year. Federal agencies, equipped with more formidable legal sticks, have nudged the national share higher—though even there, setbacks abound, as recent lawsuits over affirmative action cloud procurement targets.

For Staten Island, national precedent portends both opportunity and caution. The borough’s demographic profile—less diverse than its city neighbours, but fast-shifting—suggests a chance to leapfrog entrenched patterns, provided local institutions keep pace. Yet historic suspicion of bureaucracy runs deep here; New Yorkers are nothing if not practised in seeing through municipal bluster.

In our view, giving MWBEs real access to public contracts is a worthy ambition, but fraught with obstacles both systemic and psychological. Certification processes remain sluggish, the burden of proof (and paperwork) prodigious. Without complementary investment in technical support, most would-be entrepreneurs will sidle away, convinced that opportunity, like Staten Island itself, is one ferry ride too far.

Still, there are reasons for mild optimism. New city investments in digital onboarding and expanded language access promise, at the very least, to chip away at obscurity. The success of such efforts will depend not just on official enthusiasm but on meaningful follow-through: proper enforcement, public tracking, and plain-spoken guidance.

Networking events, even well-intentioned ones, risk devolving into polite busywork unless joined by other reforms—less red tape, more targeted outreach, direct feedback to unsuccessful bidders. The city’s economic recovery effort will be judged by actions, not intentions, especially among communities quick to spot tokenism.

As with many things New York, the path to fairer commercial opportunity is circuitous, incomplete, and tantalising. A single event on Staten Island will not upend the city’s procurement machine, but it might arm a few more New Yorkers with the tools to compete—and that, in a metropolis defined by churn, is no small contribution. ■