TMU’s social purchasing policy will increase access for businesses owned by Indigenous Peoples and racialized people

A new TMU purchasing policy is opening doors to companies owned by Indigenous people and other equity-deserving groups.

“The university’s new social purchasing policy was built on the foundational idea of ‘buying with impact’,” says Vince Carinci, senior director of strategic procurement and payment services at TMU. “By addressing systemic barriers within the university’s purchasing processes, we are creating a pathway for employees to engage smaller businesses owned by Indigenous and equity-deserving groups that may not otherwise have had a chance to become part of our supply chain.”

Adjusting the proposal process to consider new vendors

Historically, competitions to become part of TMU’s supply chain have followed request for proposal (RFP) processes typical of the Canadian public sector: Prospective bidders submit proposals and are evaluated against one another by the university. Top contenders are then offered contracts and added to a preferred vendor list that TMU employees reference to find trusted suppliers of goods and services.

“As you can imagine, systemically the RFP process favours larger organizations that often have greater familiarity with drafting RFPs,” Carinci says. “Projects from across the sector then tend to stay within the same groups, and the cycle perpetuates.”

Under the new Social Purchasing Policy, TMU’s procurement strategies are being revised to allow smaller businesses that are majority-owned by Indigenous or other equity-deserving groups to compete and succeed in acquiring contracts with the university. One way this happens is by having smaller business groups contend with one another, separate from the larger organizations. 

While the policy has been in place for a few months, Carinci says that elements of it had been in practice prior to the policy’s official approval. Over the last two years, the university has engaged with Indigenous vendors on projects worth more than $1 million, according to databases that track larger purchases made centrally with the procurement team. With the policy’s enactment, the hope is for awareness to spread further across the university, which could mean smaller, decentralized transactions can be made with a lens of supporting equity as well.

The policy started with a cross-university Social Purchasing Working Group formed in 2022 by Financial Services in partnership with the Office of the Vice-President, Equity and Community Inclusion, followed by a community consultation process. Led by Carinci, the group formalized a Social Purchasing Policy that would allow employees who make procurement decisions to turn purchases into powerful instruments that create social, sustainable and economic value for the broader community.

Since its approval and enactment in October 2023, the policy has been an example of the way that TMU embeds its core values of equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI), and Indigenous values and experiences in the university’s administrative space.

Embedding equity into administrative processes

Also adding to the policy’s success is the work of external networks that bring together public institutions who wish to augment their purchases from social enterprises, says TMU’s Chief Financial Officer Joanne McKee. Examples are the provincially funded AnchorTO and the MaRS Discovery District’s Buying With Impact.

“Although it was the work of such groups that helped kick start the groundwork for the policy,” McKee says, “particulars within it are tailored to TMU and were fine-tuned in consultation with our community to further reflect our university’s commitment to EDI.” 

McKee says the Social Purchasing Policy is just the beginning. “Building pathways to Indigenous and racialized community inclusion is only a starting point in our movement towards true equity and diversity in our finance and procurement practices.”

Tanya De Mello, vice-president of equity and community inclusion at TMU, endorses McKee’s viewpoint, adding that the seeds of change can start from any area and at any level of an organization. “Harnessing the power of institutions to impact social change has grown in recent years,” De Mello says.

“It has been so moving to watch the Social Purchasing Policy unfold at our university. It is not always evident how administrative processes can embed equity and diversity in practice. So this policy is a terrific example of how it can take just a handful of people to embody the heart and soul of an equity-based idea, and help formalize a policy that sets an entirely new precedent at TMU that will have incredible impact on our broader community.”

Next on the horizon for TMU’s procurement team is to conclude testing and reconfiguration of internal financial systems to allow accurate measurement of the university’s work in the social buying realm. Findings gained, along with the writing of a guidebook will allow the team to establish a mechanism for evaluating the impact and expanding the uptake of its social purchasing processes.

Related stories:

• The TMU community is invited to provide feedback on the university’s draft social procurement policy