Partner Article

Are You Supporting Buy Social?

The Federation of Small Businesses in the North East is backing a campaign to get more social enterprises to buy from each other.

Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) has launched a year-long campaign to get social enterprises buying from one another. The Buy Social campaign asks social economy organisations to ‘do a great deal’ by buying the products and services they need from social enterprises.

New research has revealed that 88% of social enterprises said they want to buy goods and services from other social enterprises. Currently 1 in 4 do not have any social enterprises in their supply chains.

The research, carried out by SEUK, shows that 70% of social enterprises have at least one other social enterprise in their supply chain. For the majority of those who took part (32%), social enterprises make up less than 10% of their suppliers, while 28% report a third of their suppliers to be social enterprises. Only 13% said that the majority of their suppliers are social enterprises.

When asked what barriers prevented social enterprises buying from others, 35% reported that other social enterprises don’t promote or market themselves to potential social buyers, and 29% had never been able to find social enterprises for the services or products they’ve needed. Very few said that social enterprises couldn’t compete on quality (6%) or price (6%) with other suppliers.

How can you support the Buy Social campaign?

Participants are being asked to get ONE new social enterprise into their supply chains by Social Enterprise Day on 15 November. New business deals will be announced on Twitter@SocialEnt_UKand#buysocial- and the best deals will appear on the SEUK website and e-newsletter.

To help organisations to find a new supplier, information is available on the Social Enterprise UK website, and free campaign materials, including a fold out directory, are available to order online at http://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/policy-campaigns/campaigns/buy-social

What’s the FSB doing with this?

Encouraging more trade within local areas has been one of the key pillars for us since we were created in 1974. We will be pushing the Buy Social campaign to our members to encourage more small businesses to trade with social enterprises in the region.

Creating shared value across the North East is something that we all want to see to help grow the regional economy.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Hanson .