A pair of pilot programs aim to make it easier for San Diego County small businesses and nonprofits to prepare for, navigate and land government contracts.<\/p>\n
One pilot is the Compliance, Operations, and Readiness Education (CORE) program, which helps businesses with bookkeeping and compliance support. The other is the Bonding and Underwriting Insurance for Local Development (BUILD) program, which helps participants get ready to apply for contracts, access bonding and insurance and navigate requests for proposals and government contracts.<\/p>\n
The larger goal for both is to boost economic mobility for these entities, with a target of supporting more than 100 small businesses and nonprofits over the next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe development of pilot programs like CORE and BUILD is a direct result of our commitment to creating a more equitable, accessible, and inclusive procurement process,\u201d San Diego County Board of Supervisors Vice Chair Monica Montgomery Steppe said in a recent news release. \u201cThese initiatives are significant investments in the future of our regional economy. I\u2019m proud to have played a key role in launching these programs, and I look forward to seeing them grow and thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both pilots are the result of a partnership between the County of San Diego and Founders First Community Development Corporation<\/a>, a nonprofit whose mission is to \u201csolve the economic equity gaps that impact growth in small, employer-based businesses by providing training, funding and resources to support their growth to their communities,\u201d its website says. Its backers include Capital One, U.S. Bank, Citibank and the MacArthur Foundation.<\/p>\n The pilots align with a goal of the county<\/a> to carve out 25% of its $2.2 billion annual contract spending for San Diego small businesses. The county also recently announced additional programs that will attract small business contract bids, including \u201c(raising) the small local business preference from 5% to 15%, meaning a proposed bid price will be evaluated as if it were up to 15% cheaper, helping them better compete with larger companies\u201d and making more use of requests for qualifications (RFQ) instead of requests for proposals.<\/p>\n Small businesses and nonprofits based in San Diego County can learn more and apply here: https:\/\/www.sandiegocounty.gov\/content\/sdc\/cao\/edga\/small-business.html<\/a> or https:\/\/foundersfirstcdc.org\/sd-county-program<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of pilot programs aim to make it easier for San Diego County small businesses and nonprofits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[387,383,74,76,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-20210","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-san-diego","11":"tag-san-diego-headlines","12":"tag-san-diego-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}