Social Procurement: intentionally buying your everyday goods and services from social enterprises – creates a ripple effect and an economic multiplier that enables purchasing spend to:
- Create jobs for those farthest from the labor market
- Create community regeneration for those most in need
- Positively impact society, reduce the wealth gap and benefit the environment
With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing tens of millions of americans into unemployment and hitting people of color more significantly than others, and racial justice creating a demand for change across our country, there has never been a better time to use our purchasing dollars to make intentional, community based impacts that will create jobs, increase wages, benefit those most in need, create community reinvestment, affordable housing and social, environmental and health infrastructure improvements.
Buy Social USA, created in early 2020, is a unique organization in the US, that is part of a global social procurement movement. Dedicated to supporting the growth of social procurement across the country and enabling everyday purchases to benefit people and planet. The opportunities in the US are huge and we are linking with global partners to learn from their successes and share best practice with an intention to become the hub, and gold standard for social procurement in the US.
We are focussed on developing social procurement within:
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- Large corporations,
- State and federal government offices and
- Anchor Institutions – Universities, Hospitals and other place based institutions
Of the $23 trillion US GDP, more than 37% is the spend of public tax dollars within state and federal government. We want to help redirect this spend, along with corporate and anchor institution spending, to support the economic multiplier effect of social procurement. Software giant SAP has committed to $60 million of spend on social procurement by 2025. Unilever has committed to $2bn! See how how organization can join them.
This panel discussion will bring together social enterprise leaders, corporate and government buyers and others that are trying to develop the social procurement space in the US.
