THE APPLICATION PROCESS FOR WBENC CERTIFICATION

 

Why Earn WBENC Certification?

Businesses operated by women can obtain certification from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council. The WBENC certification and how it can assist businesses to promote themselves are not widely known by enterprises. The advantages of certification and the chances the WBENC provides will be covered in this article.

Detailed WBENC History

According to the WBENC's mission statement from 2010, the organization is "committed to supporting the success of Corporate Members, certified women's business enterprises, and government bodies in conjunction with its Regional Partner Organizations." The WBENC, which was established in 1997, is the biggest third-party certifier of American businesses that are owned, controlled, and run by women. The WBENC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that advocates for the use of women-owned firms by American corporations as suppliers (WBNEC, 2010.)

Certification by WBENC

The WBENC "provides and administers the development, enforcement, and execution of its world-class certification, which is acknowledged nationally by thousands of big enterprises and a select set of government agencies (WBNEC, 2010.)

WBENC application must be submitted, reviewed, and subjected to a rigorous site visit by a Certification Review Committee. Applicants must also pay an application fee. The Committee guarantees that applying businesses are owned, run, and controlled to a minimum of 51 percent by a woman or group of women. For certification, the applicants are required to submit a wide range of documents, some of which fall under categories including owner eligibility, financial structure, personnel, management information, and governance information.

Criteria for WBENC Application:

The applicant company, or any publicly-owned business in which at least fifty-one percent (51%) of the equity is owned and controlled by one or more women who are U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents, must be at least fifty-one percent (51%) owned and controlled by one or more women who are U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents.

At least one woman oversees the management and everyday operations.

To make sure that the applicant company complies with the WBENC Standards, WBENC adopts a two-step method. This will involve a careful examination of the submitted documentation and an interview with the female owner during a site visit (s).

WBENC Application Instructions:

Please read all of these guidelines before starting the online application to ensure that it is processed quickly.

Assemble all the necessary paperwork. Please submit a written justification identifying the documents that don't relate to your business and why. Make sure that every document may be uploaded online. For required documentation, click here.

Make sure you’re financial and legal records support women/women's ownership and control by carefully reviewing them.

HIGHLY IMPORTANT Put wbenclink@wbenclink.org on the safe sender list for the owner and contact. Notifications from wbenclink@wbenclink.org will inform the owner and/or the application contact of the progress of their certification application. The WBENC application process depends on receiving these emails.

NOTE: Once certification is granted, this application will become your company's résumé. Please be as thorough as you can and type in both upper- and lowercase letters.

Use the owner's female email address to sign up.

The username for the application will be generated automatically using the owner's full email address.

Establish a password. Save your login and password because you'll need them to access your application record(s) and certificate after certification is granted.

You must respond to pre-qualifying inquiries to see whether the minimal conditions for certification are met before the application is accessible.

The page for processing applications will load.

Any sequence in which you complete the processing part is acceptable, but ALL sections must be finished before you may sign and submit the application.

If you need to depart the system, please click Save Draft to prevent losing any entered data.

The proportion of the application that has been finished will be shown in the status bar at the top of the page.

A green check mark will appear next to each area when it is finished, and the status will change from Incomplete to Complete.

The system will inquire as to whether the nonrefundable processing fee will be paid by credit card or check before the application can be submitted. You can apply to respond to the questions. NOTE: Processing won't start if your business chooses to mail a check until your designated Regional Partner Organization has received the payment.

Do not sign or apply before the female owner has checked it for accuracy. Data changes cannot be made after the WBENC application has been submitted.

Please remember to preserve the login and password of the WBENC application because you'll need them both if certification is granted.

To start the online WBENC application, go to www.wbenclink.org.

We urge other qualified firms to submit applications as well and benefit from everything the WBENC has to offer. If you have any inquiries concerning our new WBENC application, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us at EZWOSB.