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.

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.

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