Boston Contracting Opportunity Fund

On Monday, October 30, 2023, Mayor Michelle Wu announced 51 recipients of the 2023 Contracting Opportunity Fund, disbursing approximately $750,000 in grants of up to $15,000 using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds, focusing on six priority sectors that represent areas of high municipal spending. 

This marked the fund’s third consecutive year of grantmaking, demonstrating the City’s ongoing commitment to facilitating small business participation in and competition for municipal contracts. 

Of the 51 businesses chosen to receive grant funding this year, 31 percent are women-owned and 78 percent are minority-owned, with Black-owned businesses comprising over half of recipients. Over half of recipients are also small businesses and a combined 45 percent of grant recipients’ businesses are located in the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Roxbury.

The Boston Contracting Opportunity Fund grant was first announced in the spring of 2021, designed through extensive dialogues and community conversations with small, diverse business owners to address barriers in public contracting identified in the City’s 2020 Disparity Study. The study confirmed that businesses owned by women and people of color are widely available to perform City contracts, but are substantially underrepresented in the City’s spending on construction, professional services, and goods.

The selection process was rigorous, involving a thorough review of applications by the Department of Supplier Diversity and external partners, including the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts (BECMA), Amplify LatinX, and the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF). Businesses were evaluated based on their ability to meet specific eligibility criteria and their proposed uses of the capacity-building fund. Funds may be used to invest in capacity-building activities such as the purchasing of new equipment, expanding rental space, and acquiring bonding or insurance, among other uses.