SE Series: Guest Blogger David Lepage talks about the importance of procurement policies

A fantastic social entrepreneur and insightful thinker, David Lepage, shares his thoughts on how to create demand for social enterprise services. His work in the creation of the original Social Purchasing Portal is just a start to what David has done to build markets for social enterprise. As we prepare for the Canadian Conference on Social Enterprise, creating markets is one of the pillars on the wiki. We would love your thoughts.

Scaling Social Enterprise sector will require an increase in demand for their goods and services.

by David Lepage
What is not always considered in the choosing of a supplier, beyond the price point and negative impact screening, is what will be the ripple and multiplying result of that decision? Purchasing is not an isolated, cost only decision. Intentionally or not, purchasing choices directly impact employment growth or decline, local and global economies, the environment, and every supplier and their community. The choice then also ripples along the direct suppliers’ supply chain from which they have purchased.

Every business, non-profit and level of government purchase goods and services every day, including cleaning, catering, couriers, office supplies, IT, coffee, printing, maintenance and repairs, furniture, fuel, landscaping and on and on.  And within each of these purchases there are many choices from a broad variety of potential suppliers.  Traditionally purchasing decisions are based on lowest price for equivalent product or service. And recently a stronger emphasis on avoiding negative environmental impacts has been added to many purchasing decisions.

However, if we turn to a sustainable development definition from a ‘no harm’ basis to an ‘opportunity’ based premise, then our purchasing actions to fulfill this mandate change as well.  This is an entirely different decision to say  we will work with our suppliers “to create opportunities” for employment and inclusion of under-developed labour markets, support community development, living wage jobs, access to affordable housing, health care and food and support community self-reliance. The ideal is moving from risk aversion to opportunity creation.

There is a growing awareness from retail consumers, and now more business-to-business purchasers as well have decided that their supply chain really has to reflect, and be integrated into, their corporate social responsibility goals. Green washing isn’t allowable, and social values are required, both from investors/shareholders and stakeholders, employees, customers, and community partners.  This movement is the social enterprise opportunity to meet demand, scale to demand, and create greater social value in our communities.
To support the practice of sustainable purchasing to include social enterprises, the Enterprising Non-Profits Program, enp, has developed a Social Enterprise Purchasing Toolkit, available at www.sepurchasing.ca.

Purposeful purchasing, the inclusion of social enterprise in supply chains creates demand for the products and services, that will scale social enterprise.