I am Beth Pilgrim, the CEO and co-founder of Supply Change, a female-founded, tech-for-good social enterprise. I am motivated by projects that have the potential to achieve long-term, systemic impact and have chosen to focus on social procurement as an area of innovation because of its potential to scale the social enterprise sector and create systemic social and environmental change. I believe that our supply chains have the power to create a real and lasting impact on people and planet and I would love to be a role model for other women working across innovation and social impact to create change in their communities.
The Supply Change platform connects public and private sector buyers looking for goods and services, to pre-vetted social suppliers who can deliver quality and a positive impact on the communities they operate in. Each year billions are spent by the UK public and private sectors on essential goods and services but most of this spend goes towards suppliers who don't have a positive social or environmental impact. This is due to a number of factors such as a lack of awareness from buyers about where to find social enterprises and complex procurement portals that are time-consuming and difficult for social suppliers to navigate.
The Supply Change platform solves these problems by giving buyers direct access to trusted social suppliers in one place, and giving social enterprises greater visibility and accessibility to buyers without having to compete alongside commercial suppliers.
Our platform is innovative as, unlike anything in the market currently, it meets the needs of buyers who wish to procure beyond cost and quality, and social suppliers who wish to scale up through B2B trade. We make the process of buying from social suppliers easier, safer and quicker than other procurement portals and services.
Buyers are able to find vetted social suppliers quickly and suppliers only have to complete a simple qualification questionnaire once to be on the platform. Buyers are assured of their quality as suppliers all go through a due diligence process to join the platform.
We are quicker as our service allows buyers to find the right social enterprise for the job and all verification data in one place.
Our vision is to become the go-to place for organisations looking to find mission-driven suppliers and to put social value at the heart of public and private supply chains.