Safeguard Properties, one of the nation’s largest providers of default and foreclosure property management services in the country, is bringing more minority businesses into the field services market.
In collaboration with Citi and the Foundation for Small Business Development
The Valley View, Ohio, company whose national vendor network consists of nearly 10,000 small businesses has financed the training of about 250 minority- and women-owned vendor businesses that are part of the firm’s nationwide network.
Titled “Partnership for Small Business Development,” the program is an ongoing effort the field service company started in 2012 as part of its support for minority vendor in its network.
About 250 of the company’s minority- and women-owned vendor businesses recently completed small business training conducted in five cities across the country.
Citi and the Foundation for Small Business Development helped create the PSBD program to assist minority owners including many Safeguard vendor partners across the country, said Alan Jaffa, CEO of Safeguard, in a press release, allowing Safeguard to simultaneously offer advice on how to grow their businesses to vendors who needed the expertise and support efforts to promote diversity.
Such assistance makes financial sense in more than one way for Safeguard.
The company reported that its 2012 annual expenditures with diverse vendors—which include vendor businesses owned by women, minorities, veterans and people with disabilities—exceeded $153.7 million.
In 2012 the Partnership for Small Business Development training sessions were conducted in Chicago, Dallas, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas and Baltimore.
