Learn more about David LePage! Click here to read his bio.

This seminar examined an exciting and innovative tool designed to meet local community economic development goals and enhance social enterprise growth.

David LePage, coordinator of the Social Purchasing Portal (SPP), joined Tamarack's Mark Cabaj to discuss the tool, the history of its evolution and its early successes.

The SPP is a web-based business-to-business platform that facilitates business development and social value by targeting the purchases of everyday business goods and services, such as office supplies, couriers, catering, and promotional materials to participating suppliers.

As the suppliers on the database meet the participating purchasers’ business needs of value, quality and price, their business grows.

This growth enables the suppliers to provide added social value, such as: an expansion of their social enterprise, the creation employment opportunities, or the revitalization of targeted economies.

Participants in this seminar learned more about how “purchasers” can use their existing business expenditures to practice corporate social responsibility without added costs, and how the “suppliers” of goods and services, social enterprises and businesses, can gain access to new and expanding markets, growing their businesses.