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MDA's Minority and Small Business Division promotes entrepreneurship, providing technical and financial assistance to minority-owned, women-owned and small business enterprises to help them thrive and grow. The division assists disadvantaged businesses in building their capacity to better compete for contracts and other opportunities and helps private and public entities achieve diversity in contracting by connecting them to qualified minority vendors who can meet their procurement needs.
Technical and Financial Assistance
The division provides technical and financial assistance to minority, women-owned and small businesses to help them improve their business practices to achieve long-term success. Its workshops and training seminars include the popular Model Contractor Development Program series, which teaches contractors and other small businessmen and women the practices needed to thrive and better compete for business. Minority and Small Business also markets a number of state-funded financing programs that help minority and women-owned businesses obtain working capital to launch or grow their businesses.
Increasing Awareness
The division works to inform minority, women-owned and small businesses of potential contracting opportunities and strives to make government agencies and private companies, especially businesses that are new to the state, aware of qualified minority and women-owned companies that can meet their procurement needs. The division also brings together disadvantaged businesses and larger firms and government entities through conferences, networking events and other means to support diversity in contracting.
