The Buy Social brand and campaign were initially developed by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) to increase awareness and market opportunities for their social enterprise members. Launched in 2012, Buy Social promotes trade between social enterprises and encourages private businesses and public sector bodies to procure goods and services from social enterprises. It also seeks to influence consumers' spending decisions. As SEUK chief executive Peter Holbrook explains: "When you spend with a social enterprise, your money goes towards supporting a social enterprise's mission, helping to tackle some of society's most pressing problems."
On June 16-17, Holbrook was in Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the launch of Buy Social Canada and join a social enterprise exchange between the UK and Canada, sponsored by the British Council. The event brought together early adopters in the social purchasing movement in Canada as well as representatives from municipal, provincial and federal governments, large and small businesses, and social enterprises.
In his opening remarks, Don McRae, the minister of social development and Social Innovation in British Columbia, clearly stated the summit's shared goal: "We all want to see a better world and buying social is a way to get there."
Buy Social is an emerging initiative, but it has a promising future in Canada. Its potential is often compared to the success of campaigns to promote environmentally-friendly purchasing. Our aim in launching the campaign in Canada was to provide consumers with a fourth criterion in making their purchasing decisions. While we will always use price and quality as key metrics, we now also employ environmental impact. We hope that social benefit will become that fourth screen and that by encouraging consumers to buy social we will not just avoid the risk of a social crisis, but actually create economic and social opportunities and use market forces to solve long term, complex social problems. We are at the beginning of a major process, but the UK's experience provides a useful model – as did Peter Holbrook's advice that we: "Start simply, start small, and the rest will follow."
In seeking to encourage corporations to buy social, one key challenge is helping them align CSR goals and purchasing processes. As a corporate sponsor of the Buy Social launch, TELUS, a major Canadian telecommunications provider, offered their perspective.
Corinne Campney, manager of community investment, explained that this was the first time in her 25-year career with TELUS that she was in the same room with someone from the purchasing department. CSR was traditionally charity and community service focused, while procurement was driven by price, quality and risk avoidance. But now, as they seek to diversity their supply chains, businesses are facing the emerging challenge of how to add social enterprise to the mix . Being able to facilitate that internal dialogue within TELUS, a multi-billion dollar company, was quite a success for the summit. And it underscored the point made by Peter Holbrook that: "big businesses are getting the message: buying social is mutually beneficial."
Purchasing Culture
Logistical issues such as contract size were also mentioned as barriers, but the obstacles presented by "traditional purchasing culture" were the most daunting. Social enterprise consultant Sandra Hamilton told the story of working with a potential University food purchaser. She laughed as she explained how she had to lug a 100-page copy of international and inter-provincial trade agreements to deflect 'red herring' dismissals of why they couldn't consider local, rural food producers in their supply chain. She won over the leadership and the purchasers, leading to local purchasing commencing this fall semester!
One social enterprise manager, Brian Postlewaite of Mission Possible, an employment service providing building management services, detailed how hard it can be to simply bid for some contracts. "Social purchasing development isn't always about introducing a change management process, sometimes it requires changing the management."
Following round table discussions on barriers and opportunities, the summit agenda moved onto a 'solutions salon' for the final hours. The British Columbia government is emerging as an early solutions collaborator. In his address, social development minister Don McRae noted that he had "directed ministry staff to examine opportunities to work within government's existing procurement policy to bring forward options for government's consideration."
Janice Abbott, who is the executive director of Atira Women's Resource, a non-profit charitable organization, as well as the chief executive of their for-profit subsidiary, Atira Property Management, challenged the entire group: "We all need to look at our internal policies and how we're supporting each other. We need to walk the walk."
Early adopters
The Buy Social Canada Summit was an important catalyst for enhanced efforts across the country. Fortunately, we aren't starting from scratch. Twelve years ago, I and others helped launch Canada's first Social Purchasing Portals. The 2010 Winter Olympics broke ground by procuring from social enterprises. Currently in Toronto, the Learning Enrichment Foundation and the Toronto Enterprise Fund are leading a joint effort to introduce social purchasing in a major transportation infrastructure development and at the 2015 Pan-Am Games.
Adding the brand and campaign potential of the UK's Buy Social to our existing toolbox will be key to our future success in Canada. We need to move beyond the early adopters list and engage more corporate and institutional purchasers. We need to move from government policy discussion to enacting legislation like the UK Social Value Act. We need our list of Buy Social certified social enterprises to reach into the thousands, with a diversity of products, services and social impact solutions.
There is a journey ahead of us of course, but as Peter Frampton of the Learning Enrichment Foundation and Buy Social Canada partner pointed out at the summit opening: "Buying social is much easier than getting pigs to fly, so let's get on with it."
David LePage is the co-Founder of Buy Social Canada and Principal at Accelerating Social Impact CCC, Ltd. You can follow the progress of Buy Social Canada @buysocialcanada.
More from the British Council partnerzone:
• The importance of social enterprise in Korea's overseas aid work
• Catalysing the global market of impact investment
• Putting social enterprise at the heart of higher education
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