Almost every headline we read, almost every story we hear or watch today is talking about the latest business casualty or struggling company trying to keep afloat in these rough economic waters. The financial value of many companies both in BC and globally has plummeted with the stock market.

In our desire to hear some good news, to talk about something other than financial value, we sat down recently with Saul Brown of It’s Saul Good, a company that creates corporate gift solutions.

Saul is certainly aiming to remain profitable in an economy that wouldn’t be particularly kind to the sector he’s in – corporate gifts – but he also seek another kind of value: Social value.

Saul is a dedicated business owner who knows that his offerings must be unique and memorable for the organizations who give them as much as the for people who receive them. Not only are the products in those gifts manufactured and sourced locally as much as possible, but when there’s food or beverages included in a gift, it’s usually organic as well.

“I want each product in a gift to have a story,” explains Brown. “Even the wooden packaging I use to hold the items have a story.”

That’s were the social value comes in. About a year ago, Brown started sourcing his wooden gift boxes from Tradeworks Custom Products, an social enterprise that employs difficult-to-employ women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

The venture was started by Kate Stewart, herself a carpenter by trade, who saw an opportunity to create a social enterprise that taught women basic carpentry skills. Tradeworks manufactures and markets custom-made small wooden products like boxes, tool caddies and tool boxes for corporate customers including Brown’s It’s Saul Good.

In addition to providing Tradeworks with volume orders, Brown has also seen an opportunity to help the organization build capacity, so that they could better meet the needs of the corporate market. For him, the advice he offers and the help that he provides is just part of the relationship, and adds a richness to his business that he wouldn’t achieve if he’d simply carved off a portion of his profits and made a financial donation to some worthwhile organization.

“My relationship with Tradeworks is about bringing value to the community and providing opportunity to the women who work there,” says Brown. “It also adds a social value story to the gift solution that I was producing. It allows me to have a more diverse story behind it.”

Tradeworks’ Stewart agrees, and states that her focus remains on the social value the organization provides, not about the financial profit it creates. She has witnessed numerous successes, as women who normally wouldn’t easily gain and keep employment found a sense of self-worth and confidence, alongside marketable skills.

“One woman who worked for me gained enough confidence that she was able to start her own business,” explains Stewart. “Tradeworks creates a sense of welcoming and acceptance that gives people who work here a sense of belonging that they might struggle to find in a traditional workplace.”

Brown explains that for him it’s about added value and leadership.

“As I started working closer with Tradeworks, I would see the look on the women’s faces as they gained more confidence and took pride in the work that they were producing. In a social enterprise, you may end up paying more for your product, but in itself, it’s more about the value and the goodwill you’re creating for the community. And I believe the value is created by empowering the enterprise – and the people who work there.”

Junxion also sees the value in supporting social enterprises whenever possible. We have been a long time patron of another Downtown Eastside social enterprise, Potluck Catering.

Potluck started in 2001 as a café. Its focus then was on community economic development, through creating local employment opportunities through a community nutrition program whose mission focused on feeding the people who lived in the Downtown Eastside.

After some time, the people behind the Potluck Café realized that if they wanted to remain a mission focused operation, they needed to find a funding model that was sustainable. They also saw that there was very little funding for members of the Downtown Eastside community who were older than the youth segment.

“The Café was never going to make the money to support the business and give us the funds we needed to keep us going,” says Heather O’Hara, executive director of Potluck. “Catering was the area that grew, and allowed us to create a revenue model that supports the nutrition programs offered by the Café.”

Potluck employs a kitchen and café of 19, with 12 coming from the community and most of these community members suffering from poverty, addiction, and other barriers to employment. A chef and senior cooks support the training of the staff, and a full time life skills coach who helps employees learn about being on time, being responsible with my money and other key needs.

“Our goal is to stabilize people so they can maintain employment,” explains O’Hara. “We engage in wellness plans in advance, so we know what the signs and cues are in advance of people having trouble. We offer robust enabling support, and in addition to their hourly wage, we provide our employees with the basics like bus passes, socks, and, of course, meals.”

As a mission-focused organization, Junxion is particularly supportive of organizations like Potluck, but like most customers O’Hara works with, wants a high quality product and service.

O’Hara acknowledges that because her customers are interested in the social component of the organization, “People are more forgiving; they’re a bit more loyal for what you’re doing but if you don’t deliver a good product, they won’t stay with you over the long term.”

One additional benefit that organizations like Potluck and Tradeworks provides is the contribution they make to a corporation’s community investment strategy.

O’Hara says that her organization could easily quantify the contribution a customer’s purchase makes to the community, so that the business could add this contribution to a corporate responsibility report or statement. And even in a tight economy, O’Hara continues to see the importance of organization’s maintaining their investments in the communities in which they operate.

“I think companies will be more choosy about where they put their investments,” she says.

Meanwhile, Potluck continues its social enterprise operating model and O’Hara sees daily the benefits the kitchen and café staff gain. Not only do people move on to more traditional employment, including working for community services organizations and other food-related retail operations, the people who stay employed at Potluck gain confidence and self-worth along with life skills that help them battle the very challenges that were the barriers to employment in the first place.

Like most social enterprises, Potluck and Tradeworks both are about inclusion.

When you work at Potluck, explains O’Hara, “You’re just as much a part of a team as anyone else is. It’s very inclusive and very much an accepting place. And this is an exceptional experience for people who have gone most of their lives not being accepted. I see the joy in people’s faces and it makes it all worthwhile.”

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