Las Vegas – The International Franchise Association (IFA) today named Richard Snow of WSFS Bank as the recipient of its 2023 Ronald E. Harrison Award. This award, given at the 63rd IFA Annual Convention, recognizes an organization or individual who has made significant contributions to minorities in franchising and expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion matters either within their franchise organizations or within the franchise community.

“Richard Snow is leading the way in ensuring everyone, regardless of their background, has the opportunity and ability to pursue their dreams – one of the most important aspects of franchising,” said IFA President and CEO Matthew Haller. “Richard’s work promoting the business model and raising awareness of financing opportunities within multicultural communities has been crucial to increasing diversity in franchising. His work uplifts families and communities every day.”

At WSFS Bank, Snow serves as Vice President, Small Business Administration (SBA) Relationship Manager. In this role, and his previous role at Benetrends Financial as an SBA Funding Specialist, Snow has helped franchise executives and small business entrepreneurs navigate the SBA’s complex loan process. Snow has made it his mission to help provide access to capital to underrepresented groups and is an active advocate for small business owners and first-time entrepreneurs. In his volunteer capacity, Richard serves as a member of the IFA Foundation’s Diversity Institute Board and is the Chair of the Black Franchise Leadership Council, showing his dedicated focus on promoting diversity through educating more people about the opportunities in franchising.

Franchising uniquely helps break down barriers to business ownership while providing equitable entrepreneurial opportunities to people of color, women, and members of other traditionally underrepresented groups. According to Oxford Economics, franchises deliver substantial assistance to business owners, including access to capital, training, managerial assistance, and supply chain savings, which can help overcome barriers to business ownership, including discrimination. Franchising offers a unique entrepreneurial avenue for under-resourced people of color across the country with nearly a 31% minority ownership rate as compared to just 19% of non-franchised small businesses. In addition, Black-owned franchises earn 2.2 times more than Black-owned independent business on average.

Celebrating over 60 years of excellence, education, and advocacy, the International Franchise Association (IFA) is the world’s oldest and largest organization representing franchising worldwide. IFA works through its government relations and public policy, media relations, and educational programs to protect, enhance and promote franchising and the approximately 790,492 franchise establishments that support nearly 8.4 million direct jobs, $825.4 billion of economic output for the U.S. economy, and almost 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). IFA members include franchise companies in over 300 different business format categories, individual franchisees, and companies that support the industry in marketing, law, technology, and business development.