Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) serves as a catalyst for a brighter future for Southern California by leading a vision to elevate the region and creating the holistic plan to achieve our unified goals.

SCAG published the Inclusive Economic Recovery Strategy (IERS), a multi-pronged agenda which defined the need for an industry growth plan focused on supporting entrepreneurship and small businesses for women and people of color. However, in Southern California, small businesses that are woman-, minority-, and/ or veteran-owned (historically disadvantaged businesses) face more challenges to grow and sustain their businesses compared to male and/ or White-owned businesses.

SCAG developed this inclusive contracting toolkit to increase opportunities for historically disadvantaged businesses to contract with public agencies (e.g. cities and counties) and anchor institutions (e.g. colleges, universities, museums, hospitals and more) - together, contracting agencies and organizations.