Social Enterprise Marketing Initiative

Creating bridges between social enterprise suppliers and corporate purchasers.

accessWORKS, in partnership with Enterprising Non-Profits (enp), has formed the Social Enterprise Marketing Initiative to provide promotional, marketing and brokering service for social enterprise product and services.

The initiative incorporates a range of brokering services including:

providing linkages between social enterprise suppliers and Olympic, Provincial and National based purchaser
affordable consultations to clusters and individual social enterprises in the areas of:
- market plan development
- branding;
- and collaborations

For more information about enp, and a full listing of Social Enterprise products and services please visit the enp website.

Example of recent activities:

Social Enterprise Wins Olympic Contract

Congratulations to Just Beginnings Flowers, a recent enp (Cnterprising Non-Profits) grant recipient Just Beginning Flowers partnered with another local flower shop to secure the Olympic floral contract giving June and the women at Just Beginnings the opportunity to create amazing Olympic bouquets for winning athletes.

"It's like an Olympic medal for our clients," said June Strandberg - operator at the Just Beginning Flowers (part of the Phoenix Society), a social enterprise located in north Surrey. "It will be a phenomenal experience," she says, "the clients need that, and who would have thought we could get that for them". Just Beginnings provides training and employment opportunities, and now Olympic dreams of their own, for women who are single moms, victims of violence, former prisoners and/or recovering drug addicts.

"This is a wonderful example of how purchasing from a social enterprise can have a business and social impact," said David LePage, enp's Program Manager, "VANOC is assured a quality product at a competitive price while employment and training opportunities are made available to the clients at Just Beginnings." enp funded a marketing plan for Just Beginning Flowers in 2008.

For more information about Just Beginnings Flowers please visit their website:

accessWORKS was pleased to provide some RFP response writing support to Just Beginnings Flowers. One of accessWORKS’ key deliverables is to assist social enterprises to build their capacity to seize economic opportunities flowing from and relating to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.