Supporting Service Disabled Veterans
Tampa is a military center, as is much of the south eastern United States. Although none of our team served, we have worked with some of the brightest military minds in other capacities.
When it came to selecting a team to work on this site, we turned to a friend of one of our partners who runs an ad agency in Dayton Ohio, The Next Wave Marketing Innovation. His firm is a VA Certified Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business, located in a HUBzone.
For the amazing photos from high places, The Next Wave turned to a fellow Service Disabled Veteran who served in the same place almost 35 years later.
Isaac Wright, AKA DrifterShoots, is also a former US Army Paratrooper who served with the Special Forces at Ft. Bragg. He lives in Cincinnati, an hour south of Dayton.
Isaac, who has PTSD, finds solace in taking his photos from a paratroopers perspective- and had run afoul of the law. It was the courts reaction to his military service that spoke to the activist veteran in Dayton.
Running up huge legal bills and being treated as danger to a society because of having served- while committing a minor non-violent is a crime.
Veterans in the US
Number of service disabled veterans
Number of Veteran Owned Businesses
Number of Veterans dying from suicide daily
Hiring Veterans/VOSBs
The Federal government has a requirement that large government contracts set aside at least 3% of a spend should be invested in Service Disabled Veteran Owned Businesses. It’s widely ignored and only a few federal departments comply or exceed with the goal.
Most Diversity and Inclusion statements don’t include veterans, yet, our country, while putting so much responsibility on its military, does little to give back. A little under 7% of the population has served- for all of us.
If you are looking to hire Veteran Owned businesses, or veterans for your firm, there are lots of resources and organizations to help you. Please, make the effort. We did.
Investing in Veterans
While Plutus Capital Partners isn’t publishing our goals for investing in Veterans or creating requirements for our investments, we are going to ask one simple thing of each of our clients- “What’s your veteran hiring/subcontracting plan or track record?”
If the Feds can’t manage a 3% investment rate, can we do better? Let us know what percentage of your workforce is veteran, which of your suppliers, subcontractors, vendors are veteran owned or employ veterans.
We’ve always believed that if you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This is our first step.