Purchasing with a purpose: the Buy Social Corporate Challenge
The social enterprise sector is one of the most diverse and inclusive parts of the UK economy, and helping it to grow is a powerful way of realising social and environmental benefits. That’s why, in 2016, we joined Social Enterprise UK’s Buy Social Corporate Challenge to increase our spend with social enterprises and integrate their products and services into our supply chain.
How we helped
There are over 100,000 social enterprises in the UK, contributing over £60bn to the economy and employing over two million people. But it’s not always easy for these, typically small enterprises, to break into larger markets.
‘Buying social’ is a perfect fit with PwC UK’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, encouraging social mobility, and supporting disadvantaged groups in society. It has also allowed us to work with businesses that are tackling climate issues in innovative ways.
So we committed to Social Enterprise UK (SEUK)’s Buy Social Corporate Challenge, and set ourselves the target of spending £10m with social enterprises in six years.
We’ve done this by ensuring we have a fair and flexible supplier selection process that encourages new applications and helps social enterprises to scale. We’ve worked closely with SEUK and our key suppliers to find social enterprises to work with, and we’ve offered them our commercial expertise and financial support to facilitate successful commercial engagements.
“PwC’s membership of the Buy Social Corporate Challenge has brought about a longevity and scale of opportunity that has really enabled many of our members to grow with them. Those opportunities don’t come around very often and they’ve really enabled those suppliers to grow.”
Making a difference
In reaching our target spend of £10m, we’ve been able to tackle inequalities in society like unemployment and homelessness, and issues like food waste and refugee support.
As we look to the future, we’re committed to using our buying power to have a multiplier effect within society to support equality and positive environmental change.
“PwC have been great to work with because they work in the solution and not the problem.” Russell Botting, Lead Job Coach, Auticon
“A lot of corporates talk the talk but PwC said we are actually going to walk the walk and get you involved.” Pranav Chopra, Founder, NEMI Teas
In our film we look at some examples. NEMI Tea has been able to create two full-time positions for refugees thanks to our support. Over the three years to May 2022, our contract with Rubies in the Rubble has resulted in 877kg of pears being rescued and 428kg Co2 saved. In the six months to June 2022 we enabled Mediorite to pay £1800 to eight young creatives and employ two junior members of staff. And we’ve engaged consultants from Auticon to contribute more than 8,000 hours to PwC projects.
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