For social enterprises, success is all about creating community impact.

We wanted to learn more about what that means to them, so we asked our Certified Social Enterprises, “what does success look like for your social enterprise?”

Here's what they had to say.

Join Buy Social Canada, AB Seed, MacEwan University Social Innovation Institute and End Poverty Edmonton in person for a free event that will bring together purpose driven purchasers and social value suppliers to build relationships that generate positive impact for communities in Edmonton.

We invite community, public sector and private sector to come learn about social procurement and how you can buy and sell with impact on:

9:00am – 9:30am: Welcome Reception with coffee and pastries

9:30am – 10:30am: What and Why of Social Procurement Presentation by Buy Social Canada and Purchaser Panel featuring the City of Edmonton, Explore Edmonton and Delnor

10:30am – 11:00am: Refreshment Break

11:00am – 11:30am: Supplier Stories featuring Indigenous Box and Boyle Street Ventures

11:30am – 1:00pm: Lunch and Social Value Supplier Trade Show

Register now.

In 2023, we're splitting our usual Annual Symposium up into a two-part online series exploring the State of the Sector for social procurement and social enterprise in Canada.

Join us for part one looking at social procurement, the demand side of the social value marketplace, on:

This will be a free, engaging event to learn about social procurement and new research in the sector, and network with peers.

Save the date in your calendar now, and stay tuned for more details to come.

Register soon to save your spot in the Social Procurement Professional Certificate training course.

Public and private sector purchasers, join a cohort of the Social Procurement Professional Certificate course to gain in-depth knowledge of the fundamental components of social procurement success from development to implementation.

Registration deadline: March 22.

Can't join us in April? We've just scheduled two more cohorts for June and September 2023.

More details or apply now.

We share the view BC Housing expressed in their recent Request for Proposals that “across Canada, public sector organizations are exploring how to remove discriminatory barriers, and how to utilize public investments as a tool for social change," so we were very pleased to have been selected to assist BC Housing "in developing a clear set of recommendations that will inform the development of their social procurement policy and practices in the future."

Along with our colleagues at Black Business Association of BC, Exchange Inner City and procurement consultant Anthony Jeffery, we will be working with BC Housing staff to develop recommendations for the development of their social procurement policy and practices, focused on two key objectives: to increase supplier diversity from diverse and equity-deserving groups, and to increase purchasing from social impact organizations.

The New St. Paul’s Hospital is the first project to trigger the City of Vancouver’s Community Benefit Agreement (CBA) policy, designed to create additional community benefits in the neighbourhoods surrounding the project, and the city more broadly.

Based on reported data from September 2021 to January 2023, the project is currently meeting and exceeding all three Community Benefit Agreement targets.

Read our blog post to learn more about the outcomes and community benefits we're seeing, almost two years in to the project.

Purchasing Power is a speaker series featuring experts who are putting the principles of a social value marketplace into action, hosted by the British Columbia Social Procurement Initiative (BCSPI).

Join us for the final event of the 2022/23 season:

With speakers:

Mathew Coady (SLR Consulting (Canada) Ltd.), Brendan Woodruff (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation), and Darrin B Derosia (New York State Office of General Services).

Selling Social: Procurement, Purchasing, and Social Enterprises, a new book exploring social enterprise experiences with social procurement and other social purchasing programs, is now available through University of Toronto Press.

Some of the Buy Social Canada Certified Social Enterprises featured in the text include BUILD Inc., EMBERS Staffing Solutions, ImagineAbility Inc., Diversity Food Services, Rainbow's End Community Development Corporation, Ethnicity Catering, Horizon Achievement Centre, and Stone Hearth Bakery.

Learn more.

The innovative work of Certified Social Enterprise Community Impact Real Estate Society (CIRES) has been featured in an article in BC Business Magazine.

“Our criteria is totally different than a commercial owner’s,” says Steve Johnston, the group’s executive director. “We make sure that storefronts are vibrant and activated, but they have to contribute to the quality of life here. We look at what is missing from the community, what fits the community needs.”

Read the article to learn more about how CIRES works with their tenants to create community wellbeing.

Last October, we connected with leaders and passionate advocates for social procurement and social enterprise from across Canada at our 2022 Symposium: Broad New Horizons.

Watch the newly available recordings to revisit the learnings shared throughout the day.

Untapped Accessibility is a consulting enterprise that works with organizations to deliver accessibility that reaches beyond compliance to create truly inclusive organizations for all.

Profits from the work done by Untapped Accessibility go to support Open Door Group, a non-profit employment services agency and Buy Social Canada Social Purchasing Partner.