Current Projects

 

AnchorTO is currently addressing the following challenges in procurement processes in order to support the advancement of its community wealth building activities.

- Commodity gaps among certified diverse suppliers
- No bid/no response from certified diverse suppliers
- Gaps in supplier support resources
- Inability to share diverse suppliers’ lists among external stakeholders
- Narrow supplier council certification models that do not support all businesses (e.g. no certifying body for certain demographics)

Conflation of supplier diversity with equity and anti-poverty is an area of contention when working with diverse suppliers. In recognition of these challenges, in 2023 AnchorTO will shift for the first time to providing support for vendors in the social procurement ecosystem while continuing to support its member institutions. In this way we will pilot changes to policy, co-develop support resources and trial systems changes while applying an equity lens that enables access for more diverse social purpose vendors.

 
 
 
 

The goals of the current phase of work include

  1. Enabling greater numbers of Black-owned, Black-led and other diverse businesses to thrive in and benefit from the social procurement ecosystem

  2. Piloting scalable technologies, resources and solutions to further enable social procurement

  3. Embedding social procurement principals, policies and commitments among network institutions

  4. Advancing a robust and inclusive culture of social procurement through relationship building across networks of institutions, councils and vendors

  5. Advancing the community wealth building approach through our anchor institutions