The City of Madison has ambitious goals around sustainability, diversity, equity, and supporting local businesses. Today, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway is announcing a new effort to better align City spending with City goals.
The City spends around $500,000,000 annually with external vendors on goods and services. The City wants to do business with a more diverse pool of vendors, business owners, local businesses and entrepreneurs, especially those that offer services in the green economy for environmental sustainability. This new citywide public request for information (RFI) will help the City increase its awareness of vendors that help meet these objectives, and expand its partnerships on projects, efforts, programs and initiatives to meet the City’s goals.
“The City of Madison has an opportunity to leverage our role as a large purchaser of goods and service to move the needle on sustainability and diversity,” said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. “This RFI applies a mission-oriented approach to procurement across operations to shift our impact on the environment, economy and equity. I hope other institutions will join us in prioritizing sustainability and equity in purchasing.”
The focus of this first-ever citywide RFI is to increase the market share of:
(1) Enterprises that will assist in reducing the carbon emissions for City operations
(2) BIPOC and Women owned enterprises
(3) Local Madison based enterprises
Mayor Rhodes-Conway will officially announce the opportunity for businesses to respond to the request for information on July 21, 2022.
“Many City of Madison agencies are collaborating under the leadership of Mayor Rhodes- Conway to release this unique RFI. We hope this project sends a strong signal to our community and beyond about the City’s highest priorities for the substantial purchasing power that we possess,” City of Madison Fleet Superintendent Mahanth Joishy said. “For the first time, we are publicly stating these outcome-based future goals and will leverage this RFI to achieve them.”
If you know someone who fits any or all of the three priorities for the RFI and who would be interested in working with the City of Madison, please email RFI22@cityofmadison.com or visit the website https://www.cityofmadison.com/finance/purchasing/RFI