Social enterprise is a business or organization driven by a social mission and applying market-based strategies to achieve changes that are beneficial to communities and causes. The process of achieving these social or environmental aims while profiting financially is often referred to as the triple bottom line. Not only is profit, the original bottom line, considered, but the social and environmental impacts of business are also added to the books. People, Profits, and Planet comprise this new triple bottom line. Though many corporations and other organizations can have social or environmental causes they support as part of their company culture or in response to consumer standards, social enterprises are different in that their social or environmental purpose is central to their operation.
In increasing numbers, consumers are turning to social enterprises for products and services and because of this, social purchasing directories and online portals are becoming increasingly popular. These social enterprises and social purchasing directories, portals, and other platforms represent not only a new consumer standard but a new way of economic thinking. Products and services in these directories cost no more than their average competitor, in fact they are most often a more competitively and attractively priced option! But they have a distinct advantage in that they directly contribute to the long term economic, environmental and social health of communities, the environment and individuals.
In an urban economy the value of transactions from socially responsible companies operating locally benefit their communities by being more equitably distributed and by being more thoroughly circulated in the urban economy. In short, the money and its potential remains better integrated in these communities than had it gone to a vendor with fewer local ties, hiring fewer local people, with bank accounts held elsewhere, contributing less to the betterment of the community at large.
And if everyone was trying to improve their community, even if only through their purchasing choices, logic dictates we would live in a constantly improving world. I think it’s safe to assume that this is what most people would prefer.
Because demand for these kinds of directories has been steadily increasing, many countries have similar directories in place or are currently working on them. Australian organization Social Traders is working with numerous partners for a directory of Australian social enterprise, while in China a social purchasing directory created by the group Collective Responsibility provides socially and environmentally responsible choices for citizens and companies there. Some major cities with large urban economies to themselves have their own directories and portals, like London, England, while several Canadian cities including Ottawa, Winnipeg and Kitchener-Waterloo also have active portals that they are building and improving upon. In Vancouver, the Social Purchasing Directory hosted here on the Building Opportunities with Business site is one of the most comprehensive and accessible directories of its kind in any Canadian city.
While the Social Purchasing Directory hosted by BOB focuses on Vancouver’s DTES and inner-city it fully supports other regional purchasing directories like Access Works, The Green Zebra Guide and Buy Smart. As our urban economy continues to grow, this directory will be updated and managed to meet the needs of business and private consumers looking for competitively and attractively priced goods and services from socially responsible and innovative companies.
Next time you go shopping, check the social purchasing business directory hosted by BOB. You have the power to change this world for the better. Purchasing power.
Bill Drayton from Ashoka contributed this great article about social investing, in the Harvard Business Review. The whole thing is worth a read, but here is an excerpt:
