Public contracting has long been recognized as a powerful engine for local economic growth and community inclusion. Yet, for many small and diverse businesses in Boston, municipal procurement historically felt like an impenetrable fortress. A landmark 2020 Disparity Study commissioned by the City laid bare a sobering reality: minority- and women-owned business enterprises (M/WBEs) had received just 11% of the total value of Boston’s contracts over a five-year period. This disparity persisted despite these same businesses being ready, willing, and able to compete for an estimated 16.9% of contracting dollars.
The disparities were particularly glaring among Black-owned businesses, which faced the steepest hurdles in the municipal marketplace, winning roughly $12 for every $100 they might have been expected to receive based on their availability and capacity. Determined to dismantle these structural barriers, the City of Boston embarked on an ambitious reform agenda. The objective was clear: open up meaningful procurement opportunities to historically disadvantaged businesses while building a robust, data-driven framework to track participation, spending, and the real-world impact of these policy changes.
To achieve these goals, Boston introduced a series of sweeping procurement reforms designed to turn municipal purchasing into a tool for broad economic inclusion. The city wanted to see more contracting dollars flowing to minority and women entrepreneurs, generate local employment opportunities for residents, and cultivate a more competitive marketplace that could ultimately secure better prices and higher quality services for taxpayers. City staff from traditionally siloed departments—including procurement, legal, IT, auditing, and finance—forged a unified front, focusing their efforts on three core areas: streamlining entry points into city contracting for small and diverse businesses, strengthening cross-departmental coordination so buyers could plan ahead and apply new procurement methods consistently, and upgrading data monitoring to measure economic impact.
Through its impact accelerator Lift program, the Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) stepped in as a strategic partner to support this transformation. OCP helped Boston sharpen its reform strategy and successfully bridge the gap between open data and supplier diversity goals. This collaboration involved designing key performance indicators, developing intuitive public dashboards, and refining procurement forecasting mechanisms.
The results of these concerted efforts have been profound. Since the Lift program began in 2023, the total value of contracts awarded to certified M/WBE firms surged by nearly 50%, climbing from $160.3 million to a peak of $237.5 million in fiscal year 2025. Simultaneously, the sheer volume of contracts awarded to these enterprises increased by 25%, jumping from 181 to 226 contracts that same year. Most notably, the share of discretionary spending—representing money actually paid to suppliers where the City holds a choice of vendor—more than doubled.
Looking at the full trajectory of reforms since fiscal year 2019, the value of contracts awarded to certified firms skyrocketed by 165% at its fiscal year 2025 high, while their overall share of total award value rose to 12%, up from 9%. While overall contract spending remained stable over a three-year window, award values to these businesses adjusted to $115.4 million in fiscal year 2026. Today, Boston automatically tracks these critical indicators through a newly launched public spend dashboard. Furthermore, the City has published three new open datasets providing timely, transparent insights into contract awards, vendor payments, and future purchasing plans. According to OCP estimates derived from public government records, more than 10,000 employees across 514 businesses have benefited directly from Boston’s public contracts over a two-year period.
A Local Win, and the Bigger Picture
The human and economic impact of these policy shifts can be traced through individual success stories across the city’s neighborhoods. On the morning of May 18, 2022, entrepreneur Sheldon Lloyd stood outside the Orchard Gardens school alongside Boston Mayor Michelle Wu to announce a major milestone. Lloyd’s food service company, City Fresh Foods, had secured a landmark three-year, $17 million contract with Boston Public Schools to provide nutritious meals for nearly 50,000 students starting that summer.
The agreement marked the largest non-construction contract ever awarded to a minority-owned business in Boston. Founded in 1994 by Sheldon’s brother Glynn with just two employees, City Fresh Foods had steadily expanded into an enterprise employing nearly 200 people. In 2020, the company transitioned to an employee-owned model, granting its predominantly Black, Hispanic, and immigrant workforce a direct stake in the business and a reliable pathway toward generational wealth. This major municipal contract directly reflected the city’s evolving commitment to leveraging its purchasing power to drive racial equity, environmental sustainability, and neighborhood-level economic development.
The year 2022 also witnessed the relaunch of the Boston Contracting Opportunity Fund. Over a three-year span, the fund distributed grants to 178 businesses, with approximately 80% going to minority-owned enterprises and 34% to women-owned firms. The initiative was tailored specifically to dismantle the obstacles identified in the 2020 Disparity Study.
That comprehensive 700-page study had examined five years of historical municipal contracting records and surveyed local business owners about their lived experiences. It revealed that M/WBEs were receiving only 65 cents for every dollar of procurement work they were fully capable of executing. Minority-owned businesses had captured roughly 2.5% of municipal contracting dollars, while white women-owned businesses secured about 8.5%, despite estimated readiness levels of 5.7% and 11.2% respectively. Black-owned enterprises faced the widest deficit by far.
Armed with this empirical evidence, local leaders established a clear roadmap for reform. In February 2021, then-Mayor Martin Walsh signed an executive order codifying the study’s findings into formal municipal policy. The order established an aspirational target of directing 25% of city spending toward minority- and women-owned businesses over a five-year review period, tasking city agencies with creating targeted supplier diversity plans, aggressive vendor outreach campaigns, and contract-specific participation goals.
By 2023, the political mandate and empirical backing were firmly in place, but the operational machinery required deeper data infrastructure. The city needed a comprehensive vendor directory, digitized procurement plans to keep diverse vendors informed of upcoming opportunities, and real-time spending data to accurately measure progress. To accelerate these efforts, Boston applied for and secured a spot in OCP’s competitive Lift impact accelerator program, receiving both financial backing and 200 hours of specialized technical assistance.
Opening Routes In for Small and Diverse Businesses
Boston’s reform strategy targeted three foundational friction points in the municipal marketplace: businesses needed earlier visibility into upcoming opportunities, simpler pathways into eligible contracts, and more transparent channels for communicating with city buyers.
A central pillar of this outreach strategy is the "Buying Plan," which gives firms early notice of planned procurements long before official solicitations go live. This lead time provides vendors with adequate space to evaluate whether to bid, build operational capacity, form strategic partnerships, or assemble required paperwork. According to Naida Faria, Director of Administration and Finance at Boston Centers for Youth & Families (BCYF), preparing the buying plan requires departments to look ahead across various programs and coordinate early regarding expected needs for services, equipment, or transportation.
The scope of this transparency has expanded significantly. Boston has published procurement plans as open data for three consecutive years. The fiscal year 2027 Buying Plan detailed 688 distinct opportunities across 56 municipal departments, representing an estimated value of $808.3 million—an 82% increase over the previous year’s plan. This visibility has cultivated a valuable feedback loop. Katherine Cutler, Deputy Director of the Department of Supplier Diversity, noted that vendors actively engaged with the data, helping city officials clarify technical distinctions between initial contract awards and actual expenditures through targeted focus groups.
To reduce administrative burdens for smaller transactions, the city utilized Inclusive Quote Contracts (IQCs). Instead of navigating a full public solicitation process, buyers can utilize a streamlined written quote procedure that solicits bids from at least three certified diverse businesses. By the time the city published its Five-Year Supplier Diversity Program Review in July 2026, Boston had successfully awarded 81 IQCs totaling $11.4 million.
Furthermore, the city broadened its marketing and outreach by translating buying plan materials into seven languages and meeting directly with business owners at public events. These efforts drove a substantial rise in subscriptions to the City Record—a digital newsletter highlighting active contracting opportunities—and generated strong attendance at supplier diversity fairs.
These external reforms were mirrored by internal restructuring inside City Hall. Under Mayor Wu, the city expanded staffing across procurement, supplier diversity, and analytics while breaking down historical barriers between auditing, legal, IT, and individual buying departments. As Laura Melle, Director of Procurement Planning and Support Services, observed, the municipal government successfully shifted its mindset from treating procurement as a risk-averse administrative back-office function to viewing it as a strategic partner capable of mitigating risk while delivering superior public solutions.
Building the Data Infrastructure
Prior to these technological overhauls, municipal outreach regarding upcoming bids typically occurred only one to two weeks before deadlines, and spending reports were compiled largely through manual, "people-powered" reconciliation across disconnected systems. According to Purchasing Agent Casey Brock-Wilson, tracking metrics required stitching together fragmented data sources. Data Analyst Ryan Nicoll pointed out that historical contract award data captured only deals exceeding $10,000, leaving smaller purchase orders entirely uncounted and failing to track actual disbursement timelines.
To resolve these blind spots, Boston integrated business certification records directly into its financial architecture and established automated workflows within its PeopleSoft enterprise software. Rather than replacing the underlying enterprise system, the city built an agile translation layer—transitioning from early tools like Civis and Tableau to BigQuery and PowerBI—to unify procurement data and present it clearly.
The centerpiece of this infrastructure is the city’s first public spend dashboard tracking expenditures with certified M/WBE firms, which refreshes on a quarterly basis. Internal dashboards for finance personnel update daily, granting buyers immediate access to up-to-date financial data. Linking payments directly to specific contracts also allows the city to monitor compliance more effectively, catching situations where multiple smaller contracts for a single vendor cross the threshold requiring competitive bidding.
Departmental utilization of these new tools has expanded rapidly. For instance, the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture leveraged the certified business directory to direct nearly $950,000 to certified vendors in fiscal year 2025, representing a 265% increase over the previous year. Kenny Mascary, Senior Advisor for the Creative Economy, emphasized that relying on the certified vendor directory ensures municipal partnerships authentically reflect the diverse communities the city serves.
Dollars and Data: the Results
While Boston’s broader reform efforts began prior to its engagement with the Lift program, some of the most substantial quantitative gains materialized during the partnership. In fiscal year 2023, contract values awarded to certified M/WBE firms stood at $160.3 million. By fiscal year 2025, that figure climbed 48% to $237.5 million, accompanied by a 25% increase in total contracts awarded.
Data from fiscal year 2026 demonstrates how these practices have sustained themselves beyond formal accelerator support. Between July 2025 and June 2026, certified M/WBE firms received $133.7 million in spending, representing 11.4% of the city’s total expenditures. While overall award values experienced slight adjustments relative to total procurement activity, discretionary spending directed to minority- and women-owned businesses remained steady, accounting for roughly 11% to 12% of annual discretionary spending from fiscal years 2024 through 2026.
These financial metrics translate directly into tangible economic stability for local enterprises. Securing municipal contracts allows small businesses to hire additional personnel, upgrade equipment, and generate demand for local professional services. Employment data from 514 certified businesses receiving city payments between January 2024 and December 2025 indicates that these enterprises collectively sustained more than 10,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the overall supplier base continues to expand, with 1,037 businesses holding active city certifications in fiscal year 2025.
Boston’s experience offers a clear blueprint for other municipalities seeking to bridge the gap between equity policy and administrative execution. As Laura Melle noted, reforming procurement is a "double bottom line, not a zero-sum game," proving that opening doors to a wider pool of local businesses can simultaneously enhance the efficiency and quality of municipal purchasing.
