Our aims

The aim of this Community of Practice is to advance knowledge, research and best practice in the field of Social procurement.

We will do this by:

Knowledge sharing

• Sharing ideas and innovations 
• Building increased understanding of each other’s challenges 
• Problem-solving together 
• Getting advice from colleagues in a safe and trusting environment
• Sharing resources
• Learning from what others are doing
• Creating a safe space to experiment and critique/reality-check new ideas (peer-review ideas)
• Round tables/forums on hot topics
• Benchmarking against best practice

Collaboration

• Co-designing new tools (such as an evaluative framework/toolkit) 
• Fostering new cross-sector collaborations between industry, government, social and university sectors

Leadership

• Collective thought-leadership
• Setting higher standards
• Developing a common language (clarity on terminology)
• Lobbying for change (we are more powerful as a collective voice than isolated voices) 
• Generating new insights and knowledge through collective research (such as a ‘mapping exercise’)

Networking

• Connecting with the thought-leaders 
• Growing membership suggests there is potential value and goodwill