The State of Minority- and Women- Owned ... - Cleveland.com

2. Identify Listed M/WBEs
M/WBE Availability in the City of Cleveland’s Market Area
While extensive, Dun & Bradstreet does not sufficiently identify all businesses owned by
minorities or women. Although many such businesses are correctly identified in Dun &
Bradstreet, experience has demonstrated that many are also missed. For this reason, several
additional steps were required to identify the appropriate percentage of M/WBEs in the relevant
market.
First, NERA completed an intensive regional search for information on minority-owned and
woman-owned businesses in Cleveland and the surrounding area. Beyond the information
already in Dun & Bradstreet/Hoover’s, NERA collected lists of M\WBEs from the City of
Cleveland and other public and private entities. Specifically, directories were included from:
American Indian Search, Black Pages Ohio, Business Research Services Inc., the City of Akron,
the City of Canton, the City of Cincinnati, the City of Columbus, the City of Ft. Wayne, the City
of Springfield, Diversity Information Resources, DiversityBusiness.com, Greater Cincinnati
African American Chamber of Commerce, Green County, Indiana Department of
Administration, Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, Japan/America Society of Kentucky,
Michigan Department of Transportation, the National Center for American Indian Enterprise
Development, Native American Business Alliance, New York State Department of Economic
Development, New York State Unified Certification Program, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer
District, Ohio Department of Administrative Services, Ohio Department of Development, Ohio
Unified Certification Program, Pennsylvania Department of General Services, Pennsylvania
Unified Certification Program, Small Business Administration, Summit County, U.S.
Department of Commerce, United States Women’s Chamber of Commerce, Women Business
Enterprise National Council and MWBE.com. 217
If the listed M/WBEs identified in Tables 4.9–4.20 are in fact all M/WBEs and are the only
M/WBEs among all of the businesses identified in Tables 4.1–4.8, then an estimate of “listed”
M/WBE availability is simply the number of listed M/WBEs (taken from Tables 4.9–4.20,
respectively) divided by the total number of businesses in the relevant market (taken from Tables
4.1-4.8, respectively). However, as we shall see below, neither of these two conditions holds true
in practice and this is therefore not an appropriate method for measuring M/WBE availability.
There are two reasons for this. First, it is likely that some proportion of the M/WBEs listed in the
tables is not actually minority-owned or women-owned. Second, it is likely that there are
additional “unlisted” M/WBEs among all of the businesses included in Tables 4.1–4.8. Such
businesses do not appear in any of the directories we gathered and are therefore not included as
M/WBEs in Tables 4.9-4.20. Additional steps are required to test these two conditions and to
arrive at a more accurate representation of M/WBE availability within the Baseline Business
Universe. We discuss these steps in Sections 3.A and 3.B below.
217 We also obtained information from certain entities that was duplicative of either Dun & Bradstreet or one or
more of the other sources listed above. These entities are listed below in Appendix B. We were unable to obtain
relevant lists or directories from a number of entities. The reasons for this include: (1) the entity did not have a
list or the entity’s list did not include race and sex information; (2) the entity was unresponsive to repeated
attempts at contacts; or, (3) the entity simply declined to provide us the list. These entities, as well, are listed in
Appendix B.
NERA Economic Consulting 103