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The Buy Social Corporate Challenge is a simple initiative with a bold ambition:

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 the 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. To find out more and join the challenge contact our business development team.

Click here, to take a look at a number of case studies on the relationships formed through the Corporate Challenge and the impact these partnerships have had.

The Partners

The Buy Social Corporate Challenge began with 7 Founding Partners and currently has over 25 partners, representing a wide range of industries.

The Impact

The Buy Social Corporate Challenge is now five years old and over this time nearly £165 million has been spent with social enterprises by corporate partners. Over this period the Challenge has helped create 2,030 Many of these jobs go to individuals who face barriers to the labour market, showing that social enterprises can make a crucial contribution to tackling the COVID jobs crisis. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, 2020 was the best year yet on the Buy Social Corporate Challenge, with almost £73 million spent in a single year with social enterprise suppliers by corporate partners.

You can find out more about the impact of the Challenge in the Year Five Impact Report, which also looks in more depth at some of the partnerships formed between corporates and social enterprises and how the initiative is helping grow the buy social movement.

New Partnerships and More Information

We are inviting forward-thinking businesses to get in touch with us to discuss how the Buy Social Corporate Challenge could help their businesses to unlock their spending power for good. To find out more please email Jennifer Exon or Andy Daly.

Find out more about our work with the private sector here.

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