Interested in participating in the Procurement Diversity program?
Procurement and Payment Services (PPS) has established many Preferred Vendors that departments and schools are strongly encouraged to use. However, Northwestern has a decentralized, non-mandated purchasing environment. Departments and schools make many of their own purchasing decisions. As such, we encourage you to contact departments and schools that may utilize your products and services directly.
As a private University, Northwestern does not have formal percentage goals (percentage of total spend with diverse vendors) such as those at many public schools and government organizations.
When PPS sends out an ITB (Invitation to Bid) to establish a Preferred Vendor, we will include diverse vendors from the PPS internal vendor database. It doesn't guarantee you will be awarded a contract, but you will be invited to submit a proposal.
PPS will make information and diverse vendors from the internal vendor database available to departments and schools when necessary.
PPS also accesses diverse vendors in the internal vendor database when creating a small business plan for departments and schools to include with grant proposals to the Federal government.
PPS attends various diversity conferences, such as the CMBDC (minority), WBDC (women), and the Evanston Chamber of Commerce, where we meet vendors to add to our internal vendor database.
We have a formal Purchasing to Payment Advisory Board, consisting of individuals from various departments and schools that meet quarterly to give us feedback on purchasing. One of the sub-committees from the Board specifically discusses Procurement Diversity.