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October 5, 2024
October 2, 2024
The National Veteran Business Development Council (NVBDC) is the original Veteran Owned Business Certification organization developed by Veterans, for Veterans. The organization’s purpose is to provide a credible and reliable certifying authority for all-size businesses ensuring that valid documentation exists of a Veterans status, ownership, and operational control.
During a conversation with Global Business Leaders, Keith King (Founder and CEO) highlighted the major inspiration behind establishing the organization while walking us through its mission and vision. Keith is a 40+ Year Veteran advocate with heavy legislative experience, and a strong record of success in writing, lobbying for and getting passage of laws to benefit ALL veterans and has adjudicated 1,000’s of veteran claims for benefits. He is an expert in Veteran laws and VA claims and the difference between them. Through the years, he has taken on a variety of leadership roles on the National, State, and Local levels. Following are some snippets from the fascinating conversation.
In late 2012 and after years of successfully completing Federal and State contracts, I was disappointed in the fact that I had not been awarded any contracts with corporations. Knowing that under Federal law if a corporation had a contract with the Federal government that they could be required to submit a sub-contracting plan that included Minority, Women and Veteran owned businesses, I wanted to know why in most cases Veteran owned businesses were not being included.
Moreover, I was advised to contact the supplier diversity managers at the corporations to find the answer to my concerns. Being in Michigan, I reached out to the “Detroit 3” (GM, Ford, Chrysler) each of whom had a long and successful history of supplier diversity programs. Their answer was direct and simple – they would not contract with Veteran owned businesses until “you veterans create a certification program that meets our corporate standards”. Not knowing what that really meant, I was directed to the Michigan Minority Supplier Development Council (MMSDC) and the Great Lakes Women Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). Both organizations were willing to teach me and my team their certification methods.
In 2013, I made the decision to suspend operations of my company, Keith King and Associates, and focus on the development of a certification program for veteran-owned businesses. I also began to recruit my Officers who immediately began to write the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) based on what they were learning from the Women and Minority groups. Thus, NVBDC was established to address the growing need to identify and certify both service-disabled and veteran-owned businesses (SD/VOBs) in the government and commercial (corporate) marketplace.
The NVBDC administers a rigorous certification process designed to withstand the scrutiny of governmental and corporate entities seeking to utilize certified SD/VOBs. The NVBDC adopted these rigorous standards to align with supplier diversity industry best practices. Supplier Diversity practitioners sought to do business with SD/VOBs but required assurance that the companies were owned and operated by SD/VOBs. NVBDC sought to create a credible certifying agency to address this gap and to meet the needs of corporations by defining the governance for certification standards for SD/VOBs.
We have the advantage of being able to hire for “heart”. We can teach skills, but you can’t teach passion. Eight out of the eleven NVBDC board members are veterans. Each officer has a long history of military or veteran advocacy service. We created the NVBDC to help our fellow veterans.
We support all Veteran Owned Businesses: Service-Disabled, Veteran, Women Veteran, Minority Veteran, Disadvantaged Veteran, and LGBTQ, Veteran-Owned Businesses. Supplier Diversity Professionals need innovative, competitive, and emerging Veteran suppliers in their supply chain. We have a proven track record of success demonstrated through our Corporate and Veteran success stories.
Lastly, what would be the top three goals for National Veteran Business Development Council in the coming years?
Here are our top three goals for the coming years:
“We created the NVBDC to help our fellow veterans. As we say; NVBDC was created by Veterans for Veterans.