Supplier Diversity: A 2006 to 2025 Case Study Of Virginia’s SWaM Program

During a call this afternoon with AdaptOne’s Holly Glennon and John Davis, the two execs mentioned that they were experiencing an increasing demand for their certification solution platform.

Now, I have to admit I was a little surprised – I mean, is supplier diversity still a thing?

So, I went back into the Procurement Insights proprietary archives because the last time I discussed supplier diversity was during a panel discussion with the respective heads of Apple and Facebook around 2020. Before that, I had written many papers and provided analysis to government agencies in the public sector. The most memorable for me was the Commonwealth of Virginia’s SWaM initiative. I then wondered how that program has fared over the years since 2008 (it was actually started in 2006).

Here are some of the highlights from the archives and subsequent follow-up:

• The Commonwealth of Virginia’s SWaM initiative—established in 2006 and highlighted in the 2008 Procurement Insights post—has grown from a transformation of mindset into an ongoing economic strategy for increasing opportunities for small, women-owned, and minority-owned businesses in state contracting. Over nearly two decades, SWaM has evolved with updated goals, expanded definitions, significant funding, and ongoing efforts to improve certification and participation rates.

• Program Expansion and Updates:
  SWaM was formalized under Executive Order No. 33 (2006), aiming for 40% procurement spend with SWaM businesses. In 2014, Executive Order No. 20 expanded this with new “micro business” designations and raised the discretionary target to 42% of state expenditures, along with improved tracking, set-aside programs, and certification systems.

• Impact and Participation:
  By 2023, SWaM-certified businesses accounted for nearly 29% of all contracts tracked via the state’s online platform, amounting to $2.7 billion in contracts—a significant economic impact. State agencies and higher education institutions now submit annual SWaM plans with explicit goals and actual results to the Department of Small Business and Supplier Diversity (DSBSD). Many such institutions (e.g., VCU, CNU) consistently meet or exceed SWaM targets, while the program continues to refine processes to address certification backlogs and underrepresented categories.

It sounds impressive, but is the program growing or flatlining like some initiatives that started out with the same intensity of interest?

Have a look at the following two graphs. The first is the measurement of the program’s internal growth within Virginia. The second is how that same growth measures up against both public and private initiatives during the same period.

GRAPH 1 – VIRGINIA GROWTH

GRAPH 2 – COMPARISON TO THE OVERALL MARKET

WHAT DO THE ABOVE GRAPHS TELL YOU?

• The above graphs show that the Virginia SWaM initiative has dramatically outperformed industry benchmarks for supplier diversity and transformation programs between 2006 and 2025. SWaM’s success is quantified by long-term participation rates, high economic impact, and strong sustainability—driven by human-centered, process-led strategies rather than just technology adoption.

• These graphs show that Virginia SWaM’s sustained human-centered, process-first philosophy has yielded superior results compared to industry norms—marked by higher participation, longer program lifespan, stronger economic return, and much higher program sustainability than government or private sector peers.

TODAY’S TAKEAWAY

Virginia’s eVA and SWaM initiatives succeed – and continue to thrive, because they used a human-led agent-based model versus a technology-led equation-based model. Something that smart ProcureTech solution providers like AdaptOne, ConvergentIS, and others have and are starting to do.

Here is the link to my December 2008 article on Virginia’s SWaM program: SWaM: A Transformation in Mindset from an Adjunct Undertaking to an Economic Necessity (Report on Virginia Forum 2008)

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