Buy Social Corporate Challenge
A group of high-profile businesses is aiming to collectively spend £1 billion with social enterprises through their procurement
Led by Social Enterprise UK in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the Buy Social Corporate Challenge was launched in Downing Street in April 2016.
The Opportunity
The Buy Social Corporate Challenge does two things:
- It helps large businesses to engage with a range of innovative suppliers and embeds sustainability and diversity into their core operations
- It helps high-performing social enterprise suppliers to grow their revenues and impact by tapping into corporate purchasing power
The premise is simple – if businesses need to spend money on products and services, why not spend that money in a way that maximises their positive impact on society?
Social Enterprise UK supports Challenge Partners to source from social enterprises through a package of strategic engagement, supply chain review, training, internal and external communications, brokerage and events.
The Partners
The Buy Social Corporate Challenge began with seven Founding Partners and now has 30 partners, representing a wide range of industries.
Buy Social Corporate Challenge partners
The Impact
The Buy Social Corporate Challenge is now in its ninth year and over this time £477 million has been spent with social enterprises by corporate partners with £123 million being spent in 2023 alone, making the last year the most successful year of the Challenge so far. Over the eight year period the Challenge has helped create around 4,515 jobs – many of these going to individuals who face barriers to the labour market. 992 social enterprises supplied Challenge partners in the last year alone.
You can find out more about the impact of the Challenge in the Year Eight Impact Report
New Partnerships and More Information
We are inviting forward-thinking businesses to get in touch with us to discuss how we can work together to help unlock their spending power for good’. To find out more please email Jennifer Exon or Andy Daly.
The Buy Social Corporate Challenge is supported by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.
