Business View Magazine l October 2022

85 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 10 education, and networking opportunities, to name a few. Large MBEs can also seek membership with NMSDC through a Corporate Plus program. Corporate Plus members are MBEs nominated by corporate members to the program because of their demonstrated capacity to execute national or global contracts for major corporations. “We have close to 700 national corporate members including major corporations like Apple, Capital One, Cargill, Chevron, Cigna, Google, Merck, and Toyota,” says McGuire. “We also have international partners in Canada, the UK, China, Australia, and South Africa.” NMSDC is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year as it reflects on past performance and what impact it can have over the next fifty years. A recent economic impact study commissioned by NMSDC found that MBEs employ 1.75 million and generate $400 billion in annual economic output annually, realizing $140 billion in government tax revenues annually. The organization has set an ambitious target to move MBE annual revenue to $1 trillion in the coming years, a number McGuire says is not as aggressive as it appears, noting, “One trillion dollars is only 4.3% of GDP, yet minority communities represent more than 40% of the population in the U.S. Other questions we are asking as we move into the next 50 years of NMSDC include why white households are still eight times wealthier than Black households and five times wealthier than Hispanic households and why the racial wealth gap has increased by 70% since the pandemic started?” Although these data points paint a bleak picture, McGuire also recognizes that MBEs have made much progress over the years. “NMSDC-certified MBEs, on average, increased revenues by 22% between 2019 and 2021, and the number of jobs went up by 64%, showing that MBEs weathered the pandemic better, even though minority communities were hard hit. These results also NAT IONAL MINOR I TY SUPPL I ER DEVELOPMENT COUNC I L (NMSDC)