Commercial cleaning is one of the few categories where a diversity certification actually changes who gets the call. Big buyers spend predictable money on janitorial every year, the work is recurring, and supplier diversity teams are under pressure to put diverse spend in categories they can defend. Cleaning is an easy yes for them. That works in your favor if you know how to be found and how to bid.
The flip side: this is a crowded, price-sensitive field. A certification gets you a meeting. It does not win the contract. You still have to staff, price, and perform like a serious operator. Here's how owners in this category actually land work, starting with the certifications that matter and ending with how to get the first one signed.
The two markets, and they buy differentlyYour work splits into two buyers, and they almost never overlap in how they choose vendors.
Corporate and institutional. Fortune 500 headquarters, hospitals, universities, property managers, and the big facility-services primes. These buyers run supplier diversity programs and report diverse spend to their boards. The certification they recognize is MBE (minority), WBE (women), or the equivalents for veteran, LGBTQ+, and disability-owned firms. The relevant bodies are private councils, not the government.
Government. Federal agencies, state and local agencies, school districts, and transit authorities. They buy cleaning through set-asides and disadvantaged-business programs. The credentials here are 8(a), WOSB/EDWOSB, SDVOSB, HUBZone, and at the state and local level, DBE and state MBE/WBE.
Most cleaning companies should pursue both eventually. Start with the one that matches where your demand already is.
The corporate side: MBE and WBE certificationFor corporate work, the certification that opens doors is NMSDC certification for minority-owned firms or WBENC certification for women-owned firms. Both run through regional affiliates. In Atlanta, that's the Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council (GMSDC); other metros have their own NMSDC affiliate. WBENC certifies through regional partner organizations the same way.
Why these and not a state certification for corporate work? Because corporate supplier diversity programs are built around NMSDC and WBENC. When Delta, Coca-Cola, or Home Depot (all headquartered in Atlanta, all with active supplier diversity programs) screen a new janitorial vendor, they're looking for the NMSDC or WBENC certificate, not a state DBE letter. A diverse-owned firm called LACOSTA earned NMSDC's MBE Corporate Plus designation, a tier the council reserves for a small number of minority suppliers with proven capacity. That's the ceiling. The floor is a standard MBE certificate, which is enough to register in most corporate supplier portals.
Plan on the certification taking a few months. You'll submit ownership documents, tax returns, and proof that the 51% diverse owner actually controls the company, then sit for a site visit or interview. Budget several hundred dollars in fees depending on your revenue and the council.
The government side: set-asides built for cleaningJanitorial sits under NAICS code 561720, Janitorial Services. This code matters more than most because of two things.
First, the size standard is generous. SBA sets it at $22 million in average annual receipts, measured over your most recent five fiscal years (SBA moved from a three-year to a five-year average in 2024). A cleaning company can grow well into the millions and still bid as a small business. That keeps the set-aside lane open longer than in most industries.
Second, agencies set cleaning contracts aside constantly. Janitorial is one of the most reliable categories for 8(a), WOSB/EDWOSB, SDVOSB, and HUBZone set-asides, because every federal building needs cleaning and the work is straightforward to scope. If you hold one of those certifications, you can compete in a pool restricted to firms like yours instead of bidding against everyone.
At the state and local level, look at DBE (common for transit and airport facilities) and your state's MBE/WBE program. School districts, public hospitals, and universities frequently attach diversity participation goals to janitorial RFPs. The University of Maryland Medical System and Seattle Children's both run formal supplier diversity programs that publish open RFPs.
The SCA: the rule that decides whether you make moneyHere's the detail that sinks inexperienced bidders on government cleaning work. If you clean a federal facility, directly or as a subcontractor, the Service Contract Act (SCA) almost certainly applies on any contract over $2,500.
The SCA sets a minimum hourly wage by job classification (the "Janitor" rate in the wage determination) plus a separate health and welfare fringe, set at $5.55 per hour effective July 7, 2025, on top of the base wage. That fringe is owed for nearly every hour worked, and it applies to subcontractors at any tier. So if a prime brings you onto a federal building, you inherit the SCA obligation whether or not you saw the wage determination.
Price the wage determination into your bid before you submit. Owners who bid a federal job at their commercial labor rate win the contract and then lose money on every shift. Pull the wage determination for the job's locality and classification, build your labor cost from it, and add your margin on top.
Where the demand actually isYou don't have to chase agencies directly to win government-adjacent cleaning work. Three channels matter:
Subcontract under a facility-services prime. Companies like ABM, Aramark, Sodexo, and SBM hold large institutional and federal cleaning contracts and they have supplier diversity programs of their own. They use certified diverse subcontractors partly to hit the diverse-spend goals written into their own prime contracts (that's "Tier 2" spend, where a prime's use of a diverse subcontractor counts toward the end client's diversity goals). ABM, one of the largest facility-services firms in the country, runs a published supplier diversity program covering janitorial and related trades. Getting on a prime's approved subcontractor list is often a faster first win than landing a prime contract yourself.
Corporate facilities and property managers. Headquarters campuses, multi-tenant office buildings, and corporate real estate teams buy cleaning on recurring contracts and increasingly route a share to diverse vendors. This is where your MBE or WBE certificate does the most work.
Institutional buyers with public diversity goals. Hospitals, universities, and school districts. Many publish their RFPs and several maintain dedicated supplier diversity offices that will tell you exactly what they need.
What buyers look for in this categoryCleaning buyers have been burned by undercapitalized vendors who win on price and fail on delivery. Before they sign, they want to see you can actually run the contract:
- Proof of capacity. Headcount, the square footage you currently service, and references from contracts of similar size. A buyer awarding a 200,000-square-foot building won't hand it to a firm whose biggest current account is a 10,000-square-foot office.
- Insurance and bonding. General liability, workers' comp, and often a bond. Cleaning means people, keys, and after-hours access. Buyers screen hard for this.
- The right certifications, current. Expired certifications get you dropped from portals. Renew on schedule.
- A real safety and training program. OSHA compliance, chemical handling, and for healthcare or food facilities, the specialized protocols those sites require.
You won't have a marquee reference on day one. That's fine. Lead with the contracts you do have, your insurance, and a clean capability statement, and target work sized to what you can prove you'll deliver.
Pricing and capacity, realisticallyCommercial cleaning runs on thin margins, often single digits to the low teens, and the buyer usually has competing bids in hand. You don't win this category by being the cheapest. You win by pricing accurately (especially the SCA labor on government work), staffing reliably, and not losing accounts to turnover.
Match your bids to your real capacity. The fastest way to lose your second contract is to overpromise on your first and miss shifts. Win one building, run it cleanly for a year, then use that performance as the reference that lands the next two.
How to land the first contract- Pick your lane. Corporate first if you already serve businesses and want HQ and institutional work. Government first if you're near federal facilities or your state runs strong DBE/MBE programs.
- Get the certification that matches it. MBE/WBE through NMSDC or WBENC for corporate. 8(a), WOSB, SDVOSB, or HUBZone for federal; DBE or state MBE/WBE for state and local. CertifyAll handles the government filings across agencies in one pass, so you're not rebuilding the same application for each program.
- Get found. Register in the supplier diversity portals of the buyers and primes you're targeting, and build a profile buyers can actually search. A complete listing on a diverse-supplier directory is how procurement teams find vendors during market research before an RFP even posts.
- Pursue Tier 2 first. Apply to the subcontractor programs at ABM, Aramark, Sodexo, and SBM. A subcontract is often easier to land than a prime award and gives you the reference that unlocks bigger work.
- Bid work you can deliver, and price the labor rules in. On federal jobs, build from the SCA wage determination. On corporate jobs, match the bid to your proven capacity.
If you want corporate and institutional buyers to find you while you're still building references, the single best move is to be listed where they search. Get your company in front of buyers here, then work the certification and subcontracting steps in parallel.
You can also size up the certifying landscape first. Our directory of corporate programs and certifying bodies shows which councils and which corporate buyers actively recruit diverse cleaning vendors, and our guide to the cheapest path into federal contracts covers the registration steps that come before any set-aside bid.
