Highlighting Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage Month
In support of Asian American and Pacific Islanders Heritage (AAPI) month, the UCSF Anchor Institution Initiative wants to highlight community partner ASIAN, Inc., a non-profit technical assistance and research organization. ASIAN, Inc. empowers Asian Americans and socioeconomic minority communities by reducing dependencies that block their access to opportunities in business development, housing and financial education.
The Anchor Institution Initiative team collaborates with community partners to increase the economic security and opportunity for under-resourced populations in the San Francisco Bay Area by leveraging UCSF’s workforce development, procurement and community investment resources. To that end, and to strengthen the University’s partnership with ASIAN, Inc., UCSF has implemented a new sourcing process – a Sources Sought Notice – to help drive interest for Request for Quote (RFQ) submittals from small, local and diverse businesses. Additionally, the group included sources from Supplier.IO and the Directory of Certified Local Business Enterprises (LBEs) certified databases to identify these types of businesses and expanded outreach.
UCSF's First Pre-Design Supplier Diversity Forum
The Anchor Institution Initiative team recently held the first-ever UCSF Pre-Design Supplier Diversity Forum with interested businesses to enhance RFQ submittals for project, PJ3875 - PRE-DESIGN PROFESSIONAL CONSULTING SERVICES. To establish an inviting virtual space to build relationships with two-way communication the team held a follow-up to the forum: Workshop on BuildingConnected (the platform used to manage bids). Both events were well attended with an above average conversion rate and an RFQ submittal rate at almost 50 percent from minority, women-owned and small businesses.
Supplier Diversity Forums are a great way to share opportunities that are available within an organization. It also demonstrates our commitment to diversity in our procurement processes from the leadership teams. Featured below are perspectives from our UCSF staff collaborators who shared their experience. UCSF hopes to continue to create more opportunities to integrate small, local and diverse businesses in our projects at UCSF. If you have a project that you want to diversify your supply base, please contact Marliz Copado.
The UCSF Perspective:
"I was a bit nervous about co-hosting a supplier diversity forum because I was unsure anyone would show up or perhaps they would sit politely and not fully engage in the discussion. I had nothing to fear. The attendance was more than expected and the conversation was passionate and constructive. My favorite quote of the night was, "it is refreshing to have a conversation, not just a one-sided presentation." I want to look for ways to continue the conversation with our future diverse partners!" – Alicia Murasaki, Assistant Vice Chancellor, UCSF Campus Planning
"It's surprising how many questions can unintentionally prevent small businesses from participating in our RFQs. Something as simple as increasing the period of time that example projects must be provided from increases the opportunity for small business that complete less projects per year to respond to our RFQ. As we continue to have fresh perspective’s like Alicia’s, we hope to improve our templates allowing small businesses to participate in more RFQs." – Asha Kalra (Bans), Supply Chain Management Construction Contracts Manager
"It was truly an opportunity to show new vendors how our web-based bidding platform, BuildingConnected, works. Having been able to demonstrate how quite easy it was to navigate BuildingConnected’s website will hopefully encourage these new vendors to submit responses to UCSF’s request for bids/qualifications. Any help we can provide is a win-win not only for the vendors but for the University as well." – Beatrix (Trixie) Balais, Supply Chain Management Contracts Analyst