First on CNN: New NFL Initiative Aims to Help Minority Businesses Get Contracts

By Athena Jones and Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN

NFL officials will announce the program called NFL Source at its spring meeting in Nashville.

The National Football League launched a new pro gram aimed at increasing the number of minority- and women-owned businesses that work with the league throughout the year.

The initiative, called NFL Source, was announced during the league’s spring meeting in Nashville on Tuesday and aims to encourage teams to reinvest in their communities by doing business with underrepresented populations.

Jonathan Beane, senior vice president and chief diversity & inclusion officer at the NFL, ?told CNN the program will be its most expansive diversity, equity and inclusion initiative to date and will touch “on the whole ecosystem of the National Football League.”

“It involves the clubs [teams], it involves the league, it involves our tentpole events. It touches everything,” Beane said of the new program.

“We are ramping up our efforts to drive supplier diversity at the league office: IT, marketing, content, it goes on and on, every business unit is going to be looking for specific opportunities and whenever a contract comes up, it’s a natural [contracting] process which has slated diverse vendors,” Beane said.

The NFL’s latest effort to increase diversity and inclusion comes a week after the league distanced itself from recent remarks Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker made during a commencement address that many considered sexist, and homophobic.

“Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity. His views are not those of the NFL as an organization,” Beane said in a statement Wednesday. “The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

The new initiative also comes as DEI policies and efforts in corporate America and academia have faced a series of attacks from critics and some conservative lawmakers. Major universities and companies have slashed teams dedicated to DEI and wealthy corporate leaders, such as Bill Ackman and Elon Musk, have de cried diversity programs on social media.

Despite the backlash, Beane said the league remains committed to DEI and creating an inclusive environment “because that leads to higher productivity, better business solutions, more innovation and more creativity.”

“We’re not in the business of sitting back and fol lowing someone or waiting or seeing if this is ok,” he said. “We want to be the benchmark in the sports industry and hopefully get to the point where hopefully we can be a benchmark for companies as a whole.”

Demonstrators for and against the U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down race-conscious student admis sions programs at Harvard University and the Univer sity of North Carolina confront each other, in Washing ton, U.S., June 29, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein procurement standards and procedures, including criteria for which businesses will be eligible for a contract, the league said.

The league also plans to distribute a diversity playbook of businesses to teams that opt into the pro gram in September 2024.