Welcome to the Social Purchasing Portal Canada!

The Social Purchasing Portal facilitates the targeting of existing everyday business purchasing to suppliers of goods and services to blend business and social values.

The Social Purchasing Portal (SPP) is an innovative and effective tool helping to build healthy communities. SPP Canada is currently on-line in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Surrey, Fraser Valley, Calgary, Vancouver Island and Waterloo Region, with another ten communities engaged in the process.

The Social Purchasing Portal:

• Promotes the use of existing purchasing of everyday business goods and services, such as office supplies, catering, and couriers, to create local economic and social value without added cost or loss of purchasing value.
• Allows socially responsible purchasing to occur through blending business and social values
• Utilizes a business model versus a charity model, to contribute to building a healthy community.
• Is founded on the principle of building relationships and partnerships by integrating a community socio-economic development vision, business objectives and government goals.
  

Economic Development Value
The business-to-business transactions facilitated by the portal have a direct impact on the local economic and employment development goals of the community. Growing the suppliers’ businesses creates important community economic development impacts.

The targeting purchasing creates new capital expenditures from the purchasing partners.

As the supplier business grows, they require additional staff, creating opportunities for the local employment service providers to provide trained candidates to fill local employment needs. As an example, over 50 jobs have been created in Vancouver’s inner city in the past year.

Using a business model rather than a traditional charity model approach to poverty reduction has proven to be effective; assuring long term sustainability and value.

The Social Purchasing Portal is a tool that contributes to building a healthy local economy.

Community Value
The engagement of the purchasing partners, the involvement of local businesses and social enterprises as suppliers, and the relationships of community based services, facilitates multi-sector relationships and partnerships to address community development issues.

The SPP provides a tool to create a demand based employment development strategy and brings new economic activity into inner city economies.

The purchasers achieve corporate socially responsible objectives, blending business and social values in their purchasing and procurement.

The suppliers are offered access to new and expanded markets and foster new employment opportunities by honouring their commitment to consider hiring local long-term unemployed or hard-to-employ people.