Nashville invests in women and minority owned businesses. But proposed spending is dwindling.

The city of Nashville is dedicating $111 million for minority and women-owned businesses. City officials are touting their approach, while acknowledging that the number is down significantly from previous years.

Lately, Nashville’s diverse businesses have seen larger payments from city contracts hit their bank accounts.

But, going forward, it will likely be a smaller program. That’s because pandemic-era grants are running out.

The annual reports for the Equal Business Opportunity Program show that back in 2022, Metro proposed nearly five times as much in dedicated funds. But, in 2023 spending on women-owned businesses dropped from $323 million to just $39 million. For Black and brown-owned businesses, it was cut from $192 million to $72 million — down by more than half.

These numbers represent what Metro committed to in its contracts.

In terms of the actual payments, those amounts were up last year. Metro doled out around $21 million across 86 contracts with minority and women-owned businesses. This year, they paid out over $38 million over 114 contracts. That was a 75% increase in payments reaching businesses.

These contracts are often multi-year arrangements, with payments drawn out over time. Of the 114 contracts that received payouts in the most recent year, 102 were awarded over previous years.

In late 2018, Metro revised its rules for how it awards government contracts so that more of them went to diverse businesses. Nashville says it is one of the only cities in the U.S. with a race and gender-conscious program for business investment.

In a news release, Department of Finance Chief Procurement Officer Michelle Lane said the program is accomplishing what it intended to. “What’s clear in year four is that this program is working as designed,” Lane says. “And continuing to deliver real results for the black, brown and women-owned businesses that make Nashville great.”