We invite you to join an innovative partnership of industry,
employment trainers and businesses with a common goal. The goal?
To build healthier communities by creating employment opportunities
for the hard to employ and initiating targeted business growth.
The Social Purchasing Portal is a web-based
application that integrates supply chain economics and corporate
social responsibility to achieve community benefits. Simply, the
Social Purchasing Portal (SPP) provides an on-line environment
for business-to-business procurement transactions to leverage community
economic development activity.
The SPP:
- Provides purchaser of goods and services an easy and effective
means to initiate Corporate Social Responsibility
- Purchasing Partners can search for, see product and service
profiles, and contact participating suppliers of goods and services.
- For suppliers of goods and services it opens up new markets
and business growth opportunities
- Supplier Partners market directly to motivated purchasers.
- Generates positive community economic and social impacts
How it works...
In the process of purchasing goods and services companies already
choose suppliers - such as food services/catering, printing, packaging,
couriers, promotional materials, building maintenance, recycling,
and landscaping - based on the values of quality, service and price.
In the Social Purchasing Portal the purchasing companies
add one other criterion to the selection process: social value.
So, all things being equal (price, quality, value, etc.) in quotes
from the suppliers of goods or services, the purchaser is interested
in one additional component that the provider could offer: what
social value can be generated through the purchase agreement? Will
the supplier of the services and goods as a part of the contract
hire new employees from the targeted training programs? Or is the
supplier of services and goods located in a geographically defined
development area?
Benefits:
The Social Purchasing Portal integrates corporate social
responsibility into existing business-to-business purchasing and
supplier relationships and builds on the existing community based
employment services and community development efforts. The components
already exist -- SPP is the tool that brings them together into
a mutually beneficial relationship. It offers benefits to everyone
participating.
- Participating purchasers of goods and services: This
is a direct and meaningful way to initiate Corporate Social Responsibility
The SPP creates the situation where the participating
purchaser can stimulate social benefits in the community using existing
purchasing expenditures. Examples include Pivotal Software's choice
of vendors for some catering events, choosing Cook Studio Catering,
a Downtown Eastside caterer that is also a training program for
welfare recipients moving to work and youth at risk. The SPP allows
companies like Crystal Decisions, which last year changed their
purchasing policies to include social value, the easy opportunity
to implement the policy with access to suppliers that meet their
desired CSR goals. I want to participate.
- Participating suppliers of goods and services: Your products
and services will be promoted to Purchasing Partners, generating
new market and growth opportunities.
Successful community economic development requires business retention
and growth. The SPP, markets directly to motivated purchasers, and
directs contracts to participating suppliers creating the opportunities
for the local suppliers to gain a direct advantage to grow their
businesses. I want to participate.
- Communities: The SPP promotes economic development for
inner city businesses and employment opportunities for the hard-to-employ
or long-term unemployed to the participating purchasers and suppliers.
In the DTES, working with a network of employment development
services, the SPP suppliers sign
a contract that will give employment advantages to qualified persons
who are ready to re-enter the labour force.
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