Procurement

The Procurement Work Group intends to diversify the industry’s $84 billion supply chain through inclusive procurement practices. These practices include the following:

• Establish and communicate a Supplier Inclusion Policy Statement.
• Creation of a collective golf industry-specific database of diverse-owned businesses: vraconnect.org.
• Develop a baseline of diverse-owned business utilization, including national and tournament operations.
• Identify benchmarks internally and share supplier inclusion best management practices across allied industry associations.

The procurement workgroup has established formal Supplier Inclusion policy statements, specific to each individual association, to reinforce the importance of supplier inclusion in the business of golf. These policy statements are the result of collaboration, research, and integration of best practices from across sports, business, and diverse-supplier associations. Each association from the golf industry procurement workgroup has formally released a statement through one or more of the following channels: website, intranet, newsletter, employee emails, and vendor registration portals. Policy statement examples may be found on our golf industry supplier inclusion database portal.

It is encouraged that additional golf industry organizations consider adopting a policy similar in nature as a guide to further support supplier inclusion within golf.

How to Locate Diverse Suppliers
The industry has developed a collective golf industry-specific database of diverse-owned businesses to easily access, search, and engage diverse suppliers. The Vendor Resources Administration database is located at VRACONNECT.ORG – it features search capability for diverse vendors by service type, location, or diverse certification.
Please register your purchasing decision-makers as an Affiliate User to begin searching at www.vraconnect.org.

VRA CONNECT also helps provide awareness for diverse vendors regarding upcoming sourcing opportunities posted by the golf industry. This includes prospective needs for championship events, tournaments, national offices, and golf facilities. There are more than 1,000 diverse suppliers in the database currently, please encourage any that you work with to register their company on VRA Connect. The more businesses we encourage to register, the more useful the database will be for the industry.

Thank you for your support of this important industrywide initiative. Please direct questions or comments to Karen Davidson at [email protected] or Gina Rizzi at [email protected], co-leads of the golf industry DEI procurement group.