We formalised our support for the social enterprise sector as part of our responsible procurement programme in 2016 as a founding member of the Buy Social Corporate Challenge (BSCC), a joint venture with Social Enterprise UK, the Cabinet Office and the business world. Its aim? To harness the spending power of business to realise greater social and environmental benefit. Buying from social enterprises empowers communities, creates opportunities for vulnerable people and supports our commitment to transition to a net zero and circular economy, in line with our Purpose and our values. Since then, we’ve spent over £1 million annually with close to 50 social enterprises.
This is a modal window.
Buying from social enterprises empowers communities, creates opportunities for vulnerable people and supports our commitment to transition to a low carbon and circular economy. Hear about the impact of our relationship from some of the social enterprises in our supply chain in the four films below:
Film and photography production company Mediorite is a social enterprise that provides training, work experience and employment opportunities to diverse young people. Our relationship has provided employment for six young people, paid work for 30 young freelancers and enabled 210 hours of training to be issued.
Employing autistic adults as IT consultants, Auticon is a social enterprise who specialise in IT consultancy. Since our relationship began in 2019, we’ve engaged consultants from Auticon to contribute more than 8,000 hours to PwC projects, providing support, guidance and career development coaching.
London-based social enterprise NEMI Teas focus on producing high quality tea whilst providing employment and training opportunities for refugees. As a result of our long standing contract, NEMI Teas have been able to create two full time positions for refugees.
Using food that would otherwise be wasted to produce high quality condiments and sauces, Rubies in the Rubble are a social enterprise with an environmental mission. 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.
Our approach to buying from social enterprises involves three complementary steps.
We aim to ensure that our supplier selection process is transparent and objective, and is flexible enough to accommodate smaller businesses like social enterprises. We also hold and participate in ‘Meet the Buyer’ workshops to help social enterprises understand how we work, as well as sharing insight into working with big corporates. In some cases, we’ve introduced requirements for key first tier suppliers to explore opportunities to use social enterprises in their provision of services to us.
We work very closely with Social Enterprise UK and our first tier suppliers to identify social enterprises that might have the potential to supply to us. Typically, we pilot social enterprise goods and services in one part of our business before rolling them out more broadly, allowing the social enterprises time to get familiar with our requirements. Social enterprises can show their interest in supplying to us using this form.
We provide a broad range of business and personal support to social entrepreneurs through our PwC Social Entrepreneurs Club. Members have access to mentoring, drop-in coaching sessions, online workshops, as well as bespoke support and opportunities to connect with like-minded social enterprise founders. With around 300 club members, we’re able to contribute towards capacity and capability building enabling the social enterprises to join corporate supply chains, and explore partnership opportunities for the Social Value elements of public sector contracts.
There can be risks associated with buying from social enterprises compared to larger, well established suppliers. Some social enterprises may be less familiar with the standards and controls used by big businesses, so we collaborate to ensure the quality and security we need can be delivered in ways that are not overly burdensome for smaller start-ups. Another risk relates to the delivery capacity of smaller social enterprises, which may not—initially—be able to offer continuity of supply across our whole UK business. So, we adopt a ‘multi-local’ approach, and buy from social enterprises in categories that are not ‘business critical’ and where alternatives exist.
On the whole, however, we feel that the opportunities outweigh the risks. ‘Buying social’ fits with our commitment to diversity and inclusion, encouraging social mobility and supporting disadvantaged groups in society. It also inspires our people, engendering pride in the business. And, it complements our community affairs programmes, creating synergies that increase the impact of our work in both areas.
Social enterprises have formed a key pillar of our community programme for several years, and we’ve established a range of ways to ‘buy social’.
We procure goods and services from a variety of social enterprises to support our office operations, boost employee engagement and enhance our client marketing. Examples include:
As we emerge from the pandemic and our people return to our offices, this presents new opportunities to engage with social enterprises in our supply chain. Our ‘Moments of Joy’ initiative has been rolled out across all offices, surprising our people with a treat; a moment of joy to celebrate being back collaborating together in our buildings.
Social enterprises are playing a key part in this project, with delicious brownies from Luminary Bakery who support women who have had a social and economic disadvantage and refreshing drinks from Flawsome and Dash Water who reduce food waste by using ‘wonky’ fruit in their products. Other moments consisted of fruit from Fruitful Office who plant fruit trees in Malawi and desktop gardens that were supplied by Social Supermarket.
Using the fantastic products that social enterprises offer as part of this initiative is just one way that we have been incorporating social enterprises into our supply chain.
