Future Super's Ethical Supplier Journey
September is Supplier Diversity Month!
It’s also 12 months since Future Super started tracking our supplier diversity spend, so it’s a good time to reflect on how far we’ve come, and where we still need to improve.
A year ago, as part of our B Corp recertification, we created our Ethical and Local Supplier Guidelines. These guidelines help us prioritise suppliers that are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander-owned, women-led, local, independent and B Corp certified.
Future Super now screens potential companies before we decide to spend our consumer dollars on them - to help us do this we’ve signed up to Supply Nation, Australia’s largest national directory of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander-owned businesses*, to use as our primary procurement source.
Some cool supplier choices we’ve made in the past year include:
Choosing the Aboriginal Carbon Fund, a Supply Nation certified company, to offset the carbon emissions of our business operations
Using Indigi-Print, a Supply Nation certified printing company, for our office notebooks and printing
Sending our team flowers from The Floral Decorator, a Supply Nation certified and women-led florist in Sydney
Ordering our beer and cider from B Corp certified drinks company 4 Pines (back when we were in the office!)
Selecting Mirri Mirri, a First Nations training company, to deliver cultural competency training for our Board and senior management
Since September 2020, we’ve come a long way in increasing our spend on Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and women-led businesses from what were (shamefully) low starting points, and will continue to set targets to ensure we continue to focus our attention and improve these figures, year-on-year.
We’ve made our Ethical and Local Supplier Guidelines open-source, so feel free to take a read, ask questions, and plagiarise as you wish!
* Research shows that broadening supplier diversity, especially in the area of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander procurement, dramatically uplifts the economic and social impacts for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander and other underrepresented communities.