This session will highlight examples from six months of research conducted by Acumen and IKEA Social Entrepreneurship to understand: What will it take for social enterprises to create and sustain business partnerships with corporations? Social enterprises need capital to grow, but the best kind of capital is revenue, and many are finding the path to scale AND impact through business partnerships with large corporations. These corporations, in turn, are adding procurement to their toolkit for impact – sourcing products and services from social enterprises that deliver inclusion, impact, and sustainability.
This research is a project of the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, a coalition of over 90 investors, intermediaries, foundations and corporations engaged with 90,000+ social entrepreneurs around the globe. This research is part of the roadmap to assure that social enterprises play a major role in responding to and recovering from the pandemic in an inclusive way. This session will present live examples across geographies and sectors where corporations are procuring from social enterprises that can both meet their business needs, and support their impact, sustainability and inclusivity goals. This research demonstrates transformative partnerships already underway, what made them successful, and the tremendous potential ahead to integrate social enterprises into corporate value and supply chains.
