The Mennonite Central Committee’s Employment and Community Development Office in conjunction with the South Fraser Community Futures and Coast Capital Savings have developed the Social Purchasing Portal to enable business and nonprofits to work together to build a stronger community.

• What is the Social Purchasing Portal?
• How does it work?
• Who benefits?
• How successful is it?

What is the Social Purchasing Portal?

The Social Purchasing Portal uses existing purchases of businesses’ goods and services to expand business opportunities for suppliers who provide an added social value. Every business uses office supplies, couriers, catering, promotional materials, and similar goods and services. Economic and employment opportunities result from directing these existing business purchases to local businesses and social enterprises which hire the hard-to-employ.

How Does It Work?

The portal is a web-based, business-to-business database that facilitates these business relationships, which then trigger economic growth for the suppliers, which in turn creates employment opportunities for the disadvantaged.

The purpose of the portal is to provide corporations in the Fraser Valley communities such as Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission and Hope, with an opportunity to engage in corporate social responsibility by purchasing goods and services from social enterprises and local businesses which hire the disadvantaged without spending any more money than they already do on such everyday expenses as catering, cleaning and landscaping.

Who Benefits?

The Social Purchasing Portal (SPP) is a win, win, win proposition….

• Participating purchasers continue to buy products and services on the basis of price, quality and service.
  o The portal adds yet another dimension to their purchases enabling them to inject social value into their buying decisions, giving them the opportunity to contribute to their community.
• Participating social enterprises and businesses, which participate as suppliers of goods and services, have access to new customers which increases demand for their products and services enabling them to become more sustainable and hire even more from the hard-to-employ population.
• Disadvantaged persons – immigrants, youth-at-risk, long-term unemployed, and persons with disabilities – who are trained and ready and willing to work gain access to jobs that have been created by participating suppliers. For them it is a second chance to lead successful lives.

Everybody wins!

How Successful Is It?

Vancouver’s Fast Track to Employment (FTE) initiated the program in partnership with the BC Technology Social Venture Partners in June of last year. They now have over 50 purchasing partners and 35 suppliers participating. In just a few months after its Vancouver launch the portal has generated over $300,000 of targeted business activity and has created over a dozen full-time jobs for youth at risk and disadvantaged persons through the participating suppliers.