USF promises to do better by black-owned businesses

These are good times at the University of South Florida.

USF President Judy Genshaft announced in September that for the first time, USF reached “pre-eminence” status, which will grant the university an additional $5 million to $15 million in state funding.

The longtime school leader (in charge since 2001) also announced that the USF System set a record during the 2016-17 academic year with more than $475 million in research grants and contracts.

Celebrating those achievements, USF continues to be a source of pride in all of the Tampa Bay area as a premier research center, with the added cachet of having a nationally ranked football program to boot.

However, some critics say that all is not well on the North Tampa campus located between Fowler and Fletcher streets.

They note that while the USF system (which includes the St. Petersburg and Sarasota campuses, as well as USF Health) spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on goods and services and construction contracts, an incredibly small percentage of that — less than 1 percent — has gone to black-owned businesses.

In fact, in the most recent year, just 0.023 percent out of $332 million went to black-owned businesses.

University officials are aware of those numbers, and this summer Genshaft said that the university system had invoked a “proactive strategy” to provide minority-owned businesses equal access to sourcing and purchasing contracts across the system.

But advocates who have been pushing the university to do far more on the issue over the past six years say they can only wait to see if the rhetoric meets the reality.

Members of the Tampa Organization for Black Affairs (TOBA) and the Saturday Morning Breakfast Group (SMBG) have been going back and forth with USF officials regarding its lack of spending with African-American businesses since 2011.

“In the six (6) years since we first engaged the USF System about diversity spending, there literally has been no change (in) the amount of USF System funds actually spent with African American owned companies,” wrote James Ransom, board member and chairman of the economic development committee with TOBA, in a letter to Terrie Daniel, the recently hired Assistant Vice President of Supplier Diversity, back in July.

Ransom says that working with figures provided by USF for the 2015-16 fiscal year, the USF system spent $187 million on goods and services, of which only $374,000 sent to African-American owned companies.

Of the nine black companies that were listed by the school to contract with, he says that the majority ($270,000) went to a business (Brailsford & Dunlavey) out of Atlanta, leaving the other eight companies to split $100,000 of projects out of $187 million, “which we calculated to be 1/10th of 1 percent.”

The spending in the last year wasn’t much better. In 2016-17, the USF system spent $15.6 million on diverse-owned businesses, out of $332 million of addressable direct spending.

Of that $15.6 million, more than two-thirds (about 67%) was spent on women-owned businesses. A total of $767,617 was spent on black businesses.

There are seven different categories classified as women and minority-owned businesses: Asian, Pacific Islander, black, Hispanic, Native American, women and veterans.

Over the years, TOBA has focused on seeing diverse hiring practices for entities like the City of Tampa, Hillsborough County, Tampa International Airport and Jeff Vinik’s Strategic Property Partners group, among others.

Tampa House Democrat Sean Shaw said officials with TOBA notified him about their efforts with USF about a year ago. He declined to get involved at the time but said once he learned recently that the numbers hadn’t really changed, he fired off a letter to Genshaft about the issue.

Shaw says he sat down with her and other USF officials earlier this fall. He says he now believes that “they’re on the right path.”

“They understood that the numbers were not where they need to be,” Shaw said. “They didn’t make any excuses. They stated some of their efforts going forward, what they’re going to be, and asked for my help and the community’s help, and some of those efforts to make sure they can connect with minority-owned businesses and know who to speak within the community.”

In Tallahassee, state Sen. Darryl Rouson, a St. Petersburg Democrat, recently inquired about a state law that references the procurement of personal property and services.

“There have been some complaints about lack of the university spending appropriately with minority business in Hillsborough Community,” Rouson said at the Senate Government Oversight and Accountability Committee last month. He added there were concerns echoed at that meeting about a provision in a statute that excludes universities. A staffer with the committee promised to follow up with him.

Ransom says TOBA first became aware that the USF System had a problem with spending with black-owned businesses back in October 2011. That’s when he first contacted Dr. Ted Williams, the associate vice president of USF’s Diversity and Equal Opportunity Office.

In a letter, he requested that Williams recommend to Genshaft that USF implement a new executive order or directive for a new evaluation dimension entitled “Equity and Fairness.”

Nothing happened after that, however.

Flash forward to the fall of 2014, after Vinik had donated an acre of land to build the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine and Heart Institute as part of his now-$3 billion redevelopment plan in the Channel District, on which he is partnering with Bill Gates’ Cascade Investments.

TOBA and SMBG made inquiries about minority hiring at that time with USF, but Ransom says they were told to wait while Genshaft and others worked with the Legislature on procuring funds to build the structure, now estimated to cost $173 million.

Ransom says that he and his associates were later stunned to read in December of 2015 that the medical school was having its groundbreaking ceremony, prompting him to immediately demand a meeting with school officials.

TOBA and SMBG then met up with Calvin Williams, USF’s vice president of administrative services. At that meeting, Genshaft made an impromptu appearance, where Ransom said he expressed his disappointment to her that the university’s $38 million Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) facility that was built in 2012 in downtown Tampa was done without participation from any black contractors.

It was at that time that Ransom says Genshaft committed to making sure that black contractors were part of the downtown medical facility. TOBA/SMBG then produced their first economic study on diversity buying by using USF’s number in July of 2016. USF responded by announcing that they would hire a VP of Supplier Diversity, and establish a diversity and inclusion committee overseeing the USF system.

The atmosphere seems to have changed dramatically with the hiring of Daniel this spring to build the Supplier Diversity Program. Daniel previously served as the deputy commissioner of the State of Indiana Department of Administration, where she implemented and led that state’s Supplier Diversity initiatives.

“We have a lot of work to do, and I will be the first to raise my hand to say that,” Daniel said last week. “We know that internally. That’s why we are focusing our efforts on supplier diversity.”

In addition to Daniel’s hiring, Genshaft says that part of the proactive strategies that USF now has in place to address the issue includes inserting language in all USF System construction services contracts “strongly encouraging the lawful use of certified Minority and Women-owned Businesses Enterprises” to compete for or participate in design and/or construction related services.

Training for those officials holding purchasing cards communicating the importance of supplier diversity was also scheduled to begin in September.

Daniel says that her office is taking a “holistic approach,” which includes creating training programs for women and minority owned businesses to give them the skills and knowledge to succeed beyond the work they might do in the USF system. “This is not a charity program,” she says, emphasizing that USF is a business and that they want to be responsible with taxpayer dollars.

At the USF board of trustees meeting in October, Chairman Brian Lamb said that he would work with Daniel to develop and implement a strategic plan for the coming year.

“The board of trustees has a shared interest and is very focused on getting better in this area,” says Lamb. “We’ve put it in our president’s goals that we want to see progress and plan around how to get better around supplier diversity.”

USF’s reputation with the black community in Hillsborough County was negatively noted recently by the NAACP.

Speaking before at a Cafe Con Tampa event at the Oxford Exchange last month, Yvette Lewis, the recently elected new chair of the Hillsborough County NAACP, blasted the university, saying, “USF has a long way to go. USF has been an island out to their own, and they figured they didn’t need the African American people.”

Without knowing the specifics of her claim, however, USF officials pushback on any criticism that they are not doing enough when it comes to their student body. They note that USF has been recognized as the top school in Florida and sixth in the country in eliminating the completion gap between black and white students, according to a report from The Education Trust.

That study looked at 2012-2014, but spokesman Adam Freeman says since that time, the graduation rate of USF black students has now increased to 69 percent, “significantly above the national average and exceeding the graduation rate of white students.”

“I haven’t had anyone come to me about the performance of African-American students, Hispanic students and those kinds of things when it comes to graduation rates, because it’s an area where we excel,” adds Lamb.

Ransom says his group prefers to have a more cordial attitude in working the university.

“We’re not here attacking people or USF at all,” he says. “It’s just something that needs to be addressed and we’re trying to use the ultimate measure of respect and diplomacy in this process.”

“We think that diversity on the USF campus is appropriate and reasonable, so when we see that 98 percent of the money spent on at the university goes to white men, one percent [going to] white females and minorities are getting one percent, and black only (one quarter) of one percent, we’re not attacking USF. The facts and the figures are irrefutable.”

Meanwhile, members of the Strategic Initiatives Subcommittee of the USF board of trustees spoke at their meeting last week, and the issue will be discussed at the regular board of trustees meeting in December. Ransom says that TOBA/SMBG will be present at that meeting.