“For small businesses, another challenge is ensuring that they consistently have access to high value contracting opportunities and the technical capacity to scale,” says Nareit SVP of Social Responsibility and Global Initiatives Ayris T. Scales, who also has a background in supporting small and local businesses.
“At the same time, we’ve heard from REITs that identifying, vetting, and sourcing small and local businesses is challenging, as is having access to a suite of tools and best practices for supply chain expansion,” Scales adds.
“At the same time, we’ve heard from REITs that identifying, vetting, and sourcing small and local businesses can be a challenge, so having access to a suite of tools and best practices for supply chain expansion, is valued” Scales adds.
The work that The Nareit Foundation is doing with The Coalition addresses both sets of challenges: the grant enables The Coalition to continue its work in helping small businesses expand and access the large companies that can help them grow, and REITs, through The Coalition, are able to identify and expand their access to vetted qualified suppliers who have received a range of technical assistance.
But opportunity alone isn’t enough. Many businesses—particularly those without legacy networks or institutional capital—face barriers when trying to scale. That’s why The Coalition takes a two-pronged approach: strengthening the capacity of small business owners while also educating large-scale institutions “anchors” on how to identify and engage high-quality, highly skilled, competitive vendors with a range of qualifications.
Win-Win
As part of their two-prong approach, The Coalition identifies, vets, refers, equips, and assists businesses in their processes.
“We’ve gotten really good at understanding the needs of large institutions, and now large development projects and their owners,” Glaude says. “We can assure Nareit’s membership that they will get high-quality referrals. We can also help Nareit’s membership identify the needs that they have for the completion of their projects and align them with local businesses that are equipped and skilled to assist in their primary goals of getting these projects done at a high quality and in a timely fashion.”
Glaude says the grant from Nareit is “huge because it will allow us to provide Nareit’s membership with the suite of services that we offer to our large institutions in helping them pursue and achieve this work.”
Small firms are extremely capable, Glaude explains, and The Coalition wants to help match them with business opportunities to help them excel and grow their businesses. When small businesses succeed, they succeed because they hire people from the community.
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