Year-End Events: The Diversity Spend Many Companies Miss

Holiday season is also year-end season. Q4 brings some of the heaviest event spending of the year, from fall galas to holiday parties and client receptions, at the same time many fiscal years close and supplier numbers get tallied.

For anyone responsible for supplier diversity goals, that timing matters. Event spending is some of the easiest spend to direct to certified businesses. It is also some of the most likely to go uncounted.

Why Event Spend Slips Through

Many companies have goals for spending with women-owned, minority-owned, small and local businesses. Programs like these have been around for decades, and certification programs such as New York State's date back to the 1980s. The goals are familiar. The problem is capturing the spend.

Event spending tends to escape the systems that track it:

• It is booked outside procurement. Holiday parties and receptions are usually arranged by event, office or executive teams working on tight timelines, not through the sourcing process.

• It goes on a card. Venue deposits, staffing and bar services are often paid on corporate cards, where the vendor is never set up or classified.

• It goes through an agency. When a planner or production company handles the event, the company pays the agency. The certified businesses the agency hires underneath it are invisible unless someone asks.

The result: a company can hire a certified women-owned or minority-owned vendor for its holiday party and never count it.

Two Ways to Capture It

1. Book certified vendors directly, and set them up properly. When the event team books a certified vendor directly, that is spend the company can count, as long as the vendor is set up in the supplier system with its certification on file. The fix is usually just routing: make sure the event team knows which certified vendors are already approved, and that new ones go through vendor setup rather than onto a card.

Pro Tip: Vendor setup can take weeks at a large company. For November and December events, start it now, so the certified vendor is approved and counted before the busy season, not after the invoice.

2. Ask agencies to use certified subcontractors, and to report it. When an agency or planner runs the event, the certified businesses they hire can often be counted as what procurement teams call Tier 2 spend: diverse spending by your suppliers, reported back to you. That only works if the agency is asked up front, and agrees to report what it spent with certified subcontractors.

Pro Tip: Put it in the brief. A single line in the event RFP or agency brief, asking for certified subcontractors where possible and a year-end report of that spend, turns an invisible number into one you can count.

Why Year-End Is the Moment

Holiday events are among the last discretionary purchases of the fiscal year. For a company that is close to its goals, they are a practical way to close the gap. For one that has never tracked event spend, they are the easiest place to start, because the same few events happen every year.

What a Certified Vendor Should Have Ready

A certified vendor should make this easy. Before the event, expect them to provide:

• Certification letters for each program that applies: New York City, New York State, or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey

• A W-9 for vendor setup

• A certificate of insurance, which most venues require anyway

Certifications can be confirmed in the NYC Small Business Services certification directory.

FS Event Staffing is a certified Women-Owned Business Enterprise providing trained, professional event staff throughout the New York metro area. Planning a year-end event? Get in touch to reserve your team early. We are happy to send our certifications and vendor setup documents to your procurement team.