The Vancouver Social Purchasing Portal (SPP) is a web-based application that integrates Corporate Social Responsibility into existing business-to-business purchasing and supplier relationships. By utilizing existing business dynamics, it serves as a connector to create an environment that benefits everyone participating.

How it works...
In the process of purchasing goods and services companies already choose suppliers — such as food services/catering, printing, packaging, couriers, promotional materials, building maintenance, recycling, and landscaping — based on the values of quality, service and price. In the Social Purchasing Portal the purchasing companies add one other criterion to the selection process: social value.

So, all things being equal (price, quality, value, etc.) in quotes from the suppliers, the purchaser is interested in one additional component: what social value can be generated through the purchase agreement? Will the supplier of the services and goods as a part of the contract hire new employees from the targeted training programs? Or is the supplier of services and goods located in a geographically defined development area?

The numbers to prove it
The Vancouver Social Purchasing Portal currently has 217 registered partners: 185 purchasers and 32 suppliers.

The Potluck Café Society is one of the organizations that has benefitted from the SPP. A social enterprise located within and committed to the Downtown Eastside, Potluck joined the SPP as a catering supplier. Their partnership with the SPP, combined with their own business development activities, has brought more than $100,000 of business from a single purchaser.

As of the end of the 2007/08 fiscal year, the SPP has helped secure $2.5 million worth of transactions.

An active partner in the Vancouver Social Purchasing Portal (SPP), the Vancouver-based company, The Cleaning Solution (TCS), offers contract cleaning services with a socially progressive twist. Founded in 2004, TCS has two fundamental goals:

• to provide best-of-market, environmentally-friendly cleaning services to Lower Mainland clients
• to provide meaningful employment for local residents who have experienced mental illness, but are now ready to return to work.

Shaugn Schwartz, a manager at TCS, describes the organization’s progress over the years:

“In the past four years, The Cleaning Solution has established a reputation for quality service and has secured contracts with a number of high-profile clients. At the same time, The Cleaning Solution has provided many individuals recovering from mental illness with a path back to the mainstream workforce, enabling them to re-build their confidence, sense of purpose, and quality of life. We’re exceptionally proud of both achievements.

The SPP has been a big part of TCS’s success right from start up. Soon after we registered as a SPP supplier, the calls started coming in from SPP purchasers. Raincoast Books was in turn secured as our first big account.

We are proud to be the preferred commercial cleaning contractors for many more SPP purchasers including THEO BC, Mills Basic, Potluck Café and Catering, and several YWCA sites.

With a small budget for marketing, TCS has had to rely on two low cost marketing tools to help build our account base: word of mouth and the SPP. As we deliver quality service, word is starting to get around that TCS cleaners do an exceptional job and more and more SPP purchasers are entrusting us to make their office, education centre or government agency a cleaner, greener, healthier and more productive space to work in.

By purchasing their cleaning services through us, SPP Purchasers have helped provide more than 18 people in our community living with mental illness meaningful employment opportunities. Several have become healthy, confident, and comfortable enough to get off disability and join the workforce full time.”

For more information about The Cleaning Solution please go to www.cleaningsolution.ca.

To find out more about the SPP or to sign up as a Supplier or Purchaser, please go to www.sppvancouver.org.

BOB is thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of our new, more comprehensive and user-friendly website.

In partnership with Burst! Creative Group, an innovative and passionate group of web developers located in the Downtown Eastside, BOB will be unveiling the new www.buildingopportunities.org at the end of this September.

The new website will be a resource for businesses, partners and job seekers. A few of the site’s features will include direct access to:

• Business Development Services
  • BOB’s Loan Program
  • Consultant Grant Program
• Human Resource Services
  • Job postings
  • Upcoming BOB HR events
• BOB’s newly launched video
• The Vancouver Social Purchasing Portal (SPP)
  • Sign up as or search for purchasers and suppliers
• Resources to inform and help you stay connected to your community
  • News and upcoming community events
  • Business Directory

Do you wonder what kind of a difference BOB is making in the inner-city community?

• The Vancouver Social Purchasing Portal (SPP) has been successful in helping secure over $2.5M worth of procurement for inner-city businesses as of the end of the 2007/08 fiscal year.
• BOB has granted local businesses over $121,000 in funds for consultants to improve business processes, and has leveraged an additional $427,000.
• BOB’s Supported Employment Program has met or exceeded targets set out for it by Service Canada.

Metric	BOB Actual	Service Canada Target
# of people who completed intake process	265	190
# of people placed in a Work Placement	113	78
Intervention Completed (has been employed for 12 weeks)	58	55

• The Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) between the City of Vancouver, Millennium, and BOB has resulted in 77 inner-city residents being hired onto the Vancouver Olympic Village site, and $24.5 million worth of procurement from inner-city suppliers and supporters.

From Rugs to Roses: Mary Jameson’s Story  By Krystle Yeung

“I’ve come a long ways.”

By all accounts, Mary Jameson’s* statement is a modest understatement. In 1998, a close loved one passed away, and in the turbulent aftermath, Mary lost her job as a manager at a casino and her health deteriorated. A divorce and familial pressures brought her to a near breaking point. “I felt like the rug was pulled out from right underneath my feet.”

“My outside world started crumbling, and then my inside world started crumbling,” she describes. A mother of 3, Mary fought to hold down jobs and “keep things together” while struggling with anxiety.

Almost 10 years passed without any significant improvement, “I tried to get help but I didn’t know where to start,” she said.

Mary eventually moved in with her daughter and her fiancée to a home with a backyard. She began gardening again, a hobby she had long forgotten about. “Working with flowers and plants was always a love of mine. It was like a dream come true to be working in the garden and having a passion again,” she describes. “It helped me grow, to let that love out again.”

Around the same time, Mary began going to Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). Through CMHA she was able to meet with a therapist and employment counsellor, both of whom she expressed were wonderful and supportive. She was also seeking work, but the process was not without its challenges.

“I tried a couple times to look for work,” she said. “But I’d get anxious. I’m not from the city; I’m from a small town. I’d get confused, so I kind of gave up on that for a while.”

A break came in January 2008. Mary’s CMHA employment counsellor referred her to a Landscaping BusinessLinks. BusinessLinks is a customized training program organized by BOB designed to bridge the gap between job-seekers and employers. There she met Ramesh Lad, an Employment Support Coordinator at BOB.

“Ramesh understood that I wasn’t ready to just jump right into the workforce,” Mary said. After completing the week-long training course Mary was interviewed by RONA and offered a position in their Gardening Department.

She and Ramesh worked together to make her transition back into the workforce a smooth one. The position at RONA required Mary to wear safety boots, which at the time she did not have the funds to purchase herself. BOB loaned her some funds to buy a pair. She was also in need of some work clothes, so Ramesh connected her with Dress for Success, a non-profit organization that provides women with professional attire.

Ramesh keeps in touch with Mary on a regular basis. “He’s a really good morale booster,” she says, “he’s very encouraging”.

Mary will soon have passed her 5-month mark of working at RONA. “Working with plants, I can feel the energy” she says, “and that makes me happy.”

“I want to be able to stand solid, to show my children that ‘Mommy is okay’, and to have their minds at ease,” she continues, “and I am doing that.”

*name changed per request

Are you:

• A business looking for business development support, to locate or connect to other inner-city businesses?
  E-mail Brian at brian.smith@bobics.org or call 778-328-7668
• An employer willing to hire from the inner-city with support from BOB?
  E-mail Liz at liz.charyna@bobics.org or call 778-328-7669
• A socially responsible business or social enterprise who wants to join the Social Purchasing Portal?
  Go to www.sppvancouver.org
• An organization that wants to support BOB's work?
  E-mail Shirley at shirley.chan@bobics.org or call 778-328-7670; or
• An inner-city resident looking for employment opportunities?
  Email Lani at lani.johnson@bobics.org or call 788-328-7674.

Amar Virk’s experiences founding numerous businesses as well as working in the communication industry have honed his entrepreneurial skills and flair for innovation.

Passionate about the issues facing businesses and residents in the inner-city, Amar has completed his certificate in Drug and Alcohol Addiction and is working towards a Community Economic Development Certificate from SFU.

“I joined the BOB team at the beginning of August 2007,” he describes, “and it has been amazing to see how much it has grown and continues to grow in that time frame. As the lead of the Vancouver Social Purchasing Portal, one of the programs managed by BOB, it is especially exciting to me to see how corporate social responsibility integrates into purchasing and contributes towards healthier communities.

Last fiscal year, the SPP was able to help secure over $2.5M worth of procurement for inner-city businesses, and this year we are aiming for double that amount. It is my vision for the SPP this year for it to continue to form new partnerships and grow to an all new level. I’m excited for what the future holds because I know this vision is completely do-able”.

Get in touch with BOB and tell us about your story or announce an upcoming event in the inner-city. Please email info@bobics.org or call 778–328–7660.