Social Procurement – Read All About It!

The Social Procurement Manual has been developed to support and drive the use in the supply chain of organisations that have a social purpose of some sort. It is well-researched, written and presented, and will be useful to many. The authors describe the cause in this way:

We define ‘Social Procurement’ as the process of companies buying goods or services from social businesses. Through social procurement, companies integrate social businesses as suppliers with the explicit intention to create social or environmental impact through the company’s procurement function”.

This is an important subset of the overall “procurement with purpose” movement, and indeed the topic gets a couple of chapters in our Procurement With Purpose book. The Manual was based on  44 interviews - plus a somewhat wider follow-up survey - with corporate leaders, largely from organisations that have already started following social procurement principles. The aim was to learn from their experiences, both positive and negative – but in the main, they proved to be overwhelmingly positive. The Manual also contains useful insight around how to develop a successful programme.

For instance, “we heard from them the importance of considering a holistic business case for social procurement”.  That means “not only the competitiveness of the product and service, but also the reasons why social procurement is strategic for the company – and the impact premium that it can realize from the non-financial benefits of social procurement”.

There are five core reasons to engage with this initiative, with a desire to “Follow the company’s core values, purpose and culture” the most commonly mentioned by firms participating in the study.  And programmes can certainly deliver - 80% of respondents noted an improvement in employee engagement, employee skills, and talent acquisition  The survey also provides evidence that most social firms are competitive on supply, quality and price, challenging some of the misconceptions about doing business with this sector.

To reap the benefits of social procurement, the authors suggest adoption of the 5-S Adaptation Framework, including strategy, stakeholders, systems, scale and storytelling. That leads into a substantial “Playbook” section in the Manual, which describes the ‘Four Phases of Social Procurement’ - inception, identification, initiation, and integration.

The Playbook, “offers checklist-style insights into the journey of partnering with social businesses. It leverages the 5S Framework to highlight which strategic elements should be prioritized by procurement managers at each individual step of the journey”. This is well-thought out advice, with enough detail to be practical and genuinely useful, without overwhelming the reader with too much complexity.

The final core section of the document provides “10 Inspiring Cases”, short studies of initiatives and supply relationships that have worked well for both buyer and seller. Those range from Tarem Services providing office cleaning to SAP in the UK, to Elepha, a social enterprise that creates job opportunities for women living in rural areas in Colombia.

Yunus Social Business led the production of the Manual, but many other interested organisations and individuals played a role too, including the World Economic Forum. Yunus Social Business itself is a fascinating organisation. It was founded in 2011 by Peace Nobel Laureate Prof. Yunus, Saskia Bruysten and Sophie Eisenmann to “expand the success of social business from Bangladesh around the world”. 

Perhaps we will come back and look at Yunus in more detail in a further article. In the meantime, if you want to know more about social procurement– and if you are interested in sustainability, procurement with purpose, ESG or the UN SDGs, you should – then we thoroughly recommend the Social Procurement Manual.  Congratulations to authors Lucie Durand, Ruby Frankland, Daniel Nowack, Melina Sánchez and everyone else involved.

(The Social Procurement Manual can be downloaded here, free of charge. )