lehan.ca

Social justice for businesses?

Jun 21, 02:30 AM

Next winter, Parkdale Green Thumb Enterprise will provide the floral arrangements for Canada’s largest trade show center, the Toronto Direct Energy Center.
Just like any other business, they had to bid for the contract with the city of Toronto. But for executive director Maggie Griffin and the 35 part-time employees of Green Thumb, this is an especially meaningful accomplishment.
Green Thumb’s employees are all survivors of mental illnesses, which have left them homeless, impoverished and alienated from family and community. This contract means year-round employment for them.
A website called the Social Purchasing Portal helped connect them a potential purchaser.
The Social Purchasing Portal was launched in 2003 by a coalition of 17 employment and training services called Fast Track to Employment, with the funding of the British Columbia Technology Social Venture Partners organization.
Since then it has spread across Canada, a second purchasing portal started in Toronto in 2004. These two were followed by launches in Winnipeg, Surrey, Fraser Valley, Calgary, and Waterloo. One launched in Ottawa this spring and five more are in development across the country. The organizers of the purchasing portals say the system has created hundreds of jobs country-wide and generated over one million dollars of revenue for inner-city businesses.

The social purchasing portal is a website that exchanges information between businesses who purchase goods and supplying businesses who agree to employ people referred by the employment agency operating the social purchasing portal.
The premise is simple: companies supplying goods and services agree to hire people referred to them by skills retraining social enterprises. In exchange they get to post their goods and services on the purchasing portal website. Businesses agree to purchase from these suppliers, based on the premise they’re engaging in socially responsible business purchasing.
David LePage, president of Fast Track to Employment, and other proponents of the purchasing portal argue that ‘everybody wins’ – larger purchasing businesses achieve social responsibility, supplying businesses increase business, and ‘difficult to employ’ people find jobs that earn them a livable wage above the poverty line.
The idea for the portals came in response to a problem shared by many employment training services. Fast-track to Success, a consortium of 17 different organizations had a well-developed employment training and seeking system. They were training for a broad range of industries, but providing only a general job search and skills education. The problem was these skills couldnt hide a employment record with gaps, simply lacking employment provided a disincentive for employers to hire.
“If you have 17 resumes, and one of them hasn’t had a job in the past three years, you wouldn’t even consider it,” says LePage.
An incentive was necessary to encourage employers to hire.
At the same time high-tech businesses in Vancouver’s downtown east side were looking for a way to help relieve poverty afflicting the neighbourhood. Downtown east side contains one of the largest homeless populations in North America, the highest HIV infection rate in the West, as well as also faced chronic unemployment and poverty.
The British Columbia Technology – Social Ventures Project was formed in 2001 to investigate options to alleviate the poverty in their neighbourhood. LePage found a model in Ireland for them, called Fast Track to Information and Technology. It was the inspiration for the Canadian version of social purchasing. It provided the basis for proving that a relationship between employment services and employers generated stable business growth.
LePage says, “So we went to the IT sector in Vancouver, and said look at this great model in Ireland, what about doing it here?”
Fast Track explained to BCT-SVP that while they couldn’t hire people who needed help directly, they purchased from many businesses that could or did. Catering, courier services, landscaping and even computer tech support were all regularly purchased by these businesses. The argument was purchasing from companies that hired difficult to employ people was engaging in corporate social responsibility.
Fastrack to Success also went to supplying and service companies, “If we can introduce you to some purchasers, that might be interested in your products, would yo be interested in hiring people that want to get working and need a break.”
Since then, hundreds of companies have signed on to be purchasers and suppliers in Vancouver alone. 100 jobs have been generated in Vancouver’s downtown east side worth one million dollars in business.
There’s good reason for businesses to be socially responsible says LePage. A paper by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in the Harvard Business Review argued that a healthy community is required for good business. Improving the local economy can only serve to improve business opportunities. Investing in socially responsibly ventures which impact your business does not diminish its social value. They argue that in fact, it may strengthen the positive effect on a community.
Despite being for good business, LePage thinks the adoption. proves that businesses also want to give back to the community. Using the purchasing power they have creates a bigger impact.
LePage says they found a group of CEOs that really wanted to go give back to the community, a doing so through a business model appealed to them.
“You’re not spending more money, you’re not giving up any business opportunity, but you’re contributing to social development,” explains LePage.
“That’s a valid business proposition.”
LePage decided to export the idea. He saw the Purchasing Portal model to be franchisable. He met with Peter Frampton from the Learning Enrichment Foundation in Toronto and Brad Finck from SEED Winnipeg Inc. in early 2004. Both organizations immediately saw the potential. The Toronto portal launched in October 2004, followed closely by the Winnipeg portal one month later.
Brad Finck from SEED says he believes firmly in the model. He says there’s a great interest in Winnipeg for socially responsible business. Since it started they’ve had 50 purchasers sign up to use the services of 24 suppliers. Finck says some of their suppliers have experienced almost a 90 per cent revenue increase over the two years. He says the average for the Winnipeg suppliers is 37 per cent.
Finck’s optimistic about the future of the Portals Canada-wide. “We’re finally at a stage where the SPP is just about to have a national movement.”
Hundreds of businesses have signed on to be purchasers. Telecom giants, law firms, non-profit groups, hotels, medical facilities, as well as city councils have all agreed to use the purchasing portals. Most purchasers, however, are non-profit groups and social enterprises. The City of Toronto has agreed to use purchasing portal featured suppliers for all relevant purchases under $3,000.
Toronto was the second city to launch a Social Purchasing Portal. The Learning Enrichment Foundation, Native employment service Miziwe Biilk, and the Information Technology Association of Canada launched the Toronto iteration in late 2004. They received their funding from a one-time grant of $225,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Peter Frampton, executive director of the Learning Enrichment foundation, a York Region-based employment service
Since the launch, he’s seen improvement at not only the purchasing level, the supplying level, but also at the level that needs the help the most, the people who have been hired through the system. He and many other social enterprise operators see methods like this as the best hope for the increasing poverty in Canadian cities.
Frampton thinks that the portals and the organizations behind them fill a gap in governmental social policy. He also is concerned that government funding for labour training has vanished over the past ten years.
“What’s missing is the gap in training. There’s lots of support for university, and that prepares you for life. There’s a college system which is well funded and prepares people for careers.”