Who supplies the events we organize?

Are we being inclusive in decision-making when choosing catering for our events?

How can we change the processes to be more welcoming to diverse suppliers?

These were the questions that as Diversja my NGO and an organizer of a Living Library in Wrocław we asked ourselves a couple of years ago, when we were wondering how can we organize 20 events per year and be more environmentally friendly and inclusive. As you imagine, often those two go together ;-)

 We introduced some changes. Do we always follow them? Of course not, there are different constraints like: budget, availability, donor’s requirements etc, that we need to take into account. But I’d say we follow them in 90% cases and that is something we are happy about.

I wanted to share with you, on Diversja’s example, how we improved our suppliers’ diversity:

1.     We’ve listed services and products we needed

In our case it was mostly printing, catering, promotional materials

2.     We’ve built supplier profile

To us it meant people and providers that are:

-        Aligned with our values

-        Local

-        Small

-        Coming underrepresented group [e.g. businesses owned by refugees or foreigners]

-        Using local products and materials

-        catering to our needs [e.g. vegan, vegetarian, kosher, halal]

3.     We’ve developed supplier data base

Here we relied on our experience and knowledge but also asked directly Living Books – people from underrepresented groups with specific food requirements – to recommend us suppliers

4.     We’ve asked diverse suppliers about their needs

It wasn’t enough to expand the data base of suppliers to start the cooperation. It proved to be necessary for us to ask directly: what would make this cooperation possible for you? Smaller, diverse service providers may have special needs that can be blockers for cooperation, e.g. forms or timing of payment.

5.     We’ve adjusted our processes to be more inclusive

Once we understood how can we make it possible to cooperate with us, we decided to get more flexible, e.g. we pay in advance in order for our diverse suppliers to be able to buy ingredients and prepare the catering for an event.

Every organization, company or an individual has different needs, so the way we introduced the topic of suppliers’ diversity may not fit one to one to yours, but I encourage you to come back to the intro questions and next time you need a supplier – check your options to be more inclusive.