 All right. I think I'm going to get us started and we'll see who else jumps in as we're going. I'm Yasmeena Zaidman. I'm the Chief Partnerships Officer at Acumen and thank you all for joining. I think we have almost every time zone across the globe covered. So whether it's early morning, afternoon, or late evening, thank you all for being here. I'm really excited today to host the session at SoCAP with three women that I admire tremendously. We've had a chance to work together actually over the past year in doing some new research that I think could be really valuable for the social enterprise sector, the impact investing sector, and also the corporate world and the world of inclusion and sustainability and business. So today's session is on driving inclusive growth through corporate social procurement and social sourcing. And the conversation we're going to have today, which we have to have in a brief 45 minutes, is really focused on something that we've been doing research on for almost a year and we could talk about for days. So we'll try to hone in on some of the key lessons from our work and some real-world examples from our panelists who I will introduce in a second. But we'll also make sure that we share out with you some of the research that we've shared, which includes case studies and quite a bit of data. Our goal in this research was to really focus on where we see examples of corporations doing business with social enterprises. We kind of went into this thinking that this was a huge untapped opportunity, but potentially a challenging area, as many people didn't have enough visibility into what was working, what wasn't working, where can we see examples of this? So our focus was on surfacing examples of corporate-ready social enterprises and then learning from them about what was working and what wasn't. So really that kind of laser focus on what's already going on and what can that teach us about how to really amplify this opportunity. So I'm thrilled today to have with us two of the companies, the corporations that have been real leaders, in looking for ways to integrate social procurement and business partnerships with social enterprises into their core business, as well as Sumita goes from Frank Sutra, which is a great example of this and one that's featured in our research. Osas, who joins us from Ikea Social Entrepreneurship and Alexandra Vendor-Ploeg from SAP have both been really vocal champions for this idea, so it's really a thrill to have them with us today in the panel. I wanted to start out by really asking each of you to share with us kind of your lens on this topic, why this has been relevant for your own organization, and then we'll move into some of the insights that we found from our research. So I want to start with you, Osas, just to share a little bit on why Ikea has taken on this topic and how your organization within Ikea, Ikea Social Entrepreneurship, fits into that. Thanks, Yasmin, a pleasure to be here with you all. Well, I think we all have the same big challenges ahead of us, and we're seeing the climate, we're seeing the growing inequalities, and we really need to come together to also live our founders vision, which was a better everyday life for the many people. So we started working with philanthropy in Ikea many, many years ago, and then we saw the growing movement of social entrepreneurship, and we thought this was an interesting intersection between business and philanthropy. And some 10 years ago, we started to do business with social entrepreneurs because many social businesses need to grow through creating a marketplace. And we found that really intriguing and also gave us new perspectives, and we wanted to especially focus on social businesses that work with people who are vulnerable in many different aspects. It can be living in poverty or living with disabilities or other topics. And based on that experience, we now lately have added some more tools to our toolbox where we also approach not only direct business relationship, but also looking at our whole ecosystem. Where are the vulnerabilities? What is it that needs transformation, and where can we partner with social enterprises and entrepreneurs to find innovations that can transform the whole setup? Thank you, Asa. It's something that you said just now that really kind of sparked my thinking because I think the conversation about what is an inclusive and sustainable business has evolved a lot and is becoming a much more important part of the discussion on the role of business in society. And I sometimes feel like the term inclusive can mean so many things. So when you talk about what does it mean to engage with vulnerable populations, first of all, I think that's an important distinction, right? They're talking about groups of people that have been marginalized or faced unique challenges. So as you think of social enterprises that you want to engage with, what are the kinds of impacts that you look for in how they actually engage those communities? And I say that in part because if you think about how businesses touch different groups, they could be considered inclusive simply because they do business with different populations. But a truly inclusive business is actually centering on the needs of those communities and addressing their challenges. So I'm curious what are some of the kinds of impacts that you've looked for through those business partnerships with social enterprises? Yeah, it's a very great question to look at. And we actually work with a tool that is used a lot in development organization, which is called a theory of change to realize what are the impacts and what are the outcomes and what are the outputs that we're looking for. Because social change is also not a quick fix. You cannot have the same metrics as you normally would have in a pure financial transactional relationship. This is something else. This is building, evolving, developing, empowering. So we are looking for social entrepreneurs that have the social mission in the core and for the business relationships, of course, they also have to be in a relevant sector that is covered in our home furnishing offer. So like with Sumita and Transutra working with the craft and textiles, for instance. But it can also be in services or other customer facing types of partnerships. So social mission at the core, the passion to drive change. And I know we're going to hear more from Sumita, but I think in their case, it's also really interesting how they also make all the artisans co-owning the company. So that's, of course, an extra level of growing the incomes, growing the livelihoods of the people on the ground, growing their capacities, making sure that they can develop as people, become managers and also lead their own enterprise at the end of the day. Absolutely. That's talking about really inclusion at the level of asset ownership and participation at a whole other level. So I think it's a perfect segue to Sumita. I would love to hear more about your company, how it was developed and then how you got into the space of working with corporate partners. Thank you, Yasminah. And hello everyone. So Rangsutra is 15 years old this year. And prior to that, I had worked for many years, several years on the ground as a development practitioner focusing on social development to bring about change. And sometime towards the turn, after the turn of the century and when we entered the new millennium and India, I come from India and India having gone through what we call globalization and opening up of our economy. What I realized was that while some of us in India were benefiting, people like me who had access to education and opportunities, there were many people, especially in rural India and especially women who did not have such opportunities and really needed a hand up, a helping hand to sort of make a better life for themselves. So that's when we thought of starting this organization. And another thing that inspired me was that I came across this survey, this study done by a UN organization, which said that women do 64 or 65% of the world's work, earn just 10% of the world's income and own about 1% of the world's assets. So I felt this was totally unfair and we've got to do something. So we started this company and actually, as Orsa mentioned, the artisans are our shareholders. That was partly by default because we did not have an option. No one was willing to give us a loan to start up or invest right in the beginning. So the 1000 artisans put in 1000 rupees each and that's how we started our company. And our mission is really to ensure social economic transformation and change, empowerment of women, and we do it through crafts, handicrafts and hand looms, which are a tradition in India in any case. And we try our role, Ram Sutra is a bridge between rural artisans, especially women, and the market through global retailers like Aikya Asa is here. And so we try to be that strong bridge to link rural artisans to global customers. Thank you, Sumita. That's really a powerful model and I think you raised this great point. As we talk about inclusive business, obviously incomes and living wage are really important, but income is not the same as ownership. And what we see when we have issues around structural barriers to opportunity, whether for women, for racial minorities, for low income communities, that without asset ownership, it's really difficult to build wealth over time. So I think it's a really, really great model. I'd love to turn now to Alex from SAP, another company that's been an incredible champion for this, to hear more about how you got involved in this and really how you're pushing the field in ways that I think are really exciting. I mean, hi, such a pleasure being with all of you. And apologies that the sun is coming straight in my face. But it's nice, right, to feel the sun in your face, so I'll leave it. You know, I think similarly to what also was describing how IKEA was going through a journey that started about 10 years ago, the same is also true on our end, but also very honestly in the first sort of five, six years of working with social enterprises, it was very heavily CSR driven, right? So it was maybe not purely philanthropic, but it had a lot to do with us believing in the sector and us providing capacity building to social enterprises, working with intermediary organizations, creating partnerships with network organizations and the like. A significant effort was made there. I mean, we created, I think, a social investment and an in-kind contribution of over 21 million just through pure capacity building efforts alone. But the turning point, I would say, came about three years ago. And I don't think it's a coincidence that it was three years ago, because if you sort of look at how pressures have increased on companies to be not just ESG aware, but to integrate ESG much more closely into their business, increasing regulation that's coming up, not just in terms of climate action, but also in terms of supply chain. So all of these pressures have lead to companies needing to innovate in terms of their business practices. And what we saw is that a very easy way to innovate or to include ESG practices in SAP was to start building much more closer partnerships with social enterprises. And the area that we felt was an area for us to explore more was social sourcing and social procurement. And the reasons for that are actually quite simple. If you look at sort of the market size of procurement, procurement alone generates 14 trillion US dollars annually in trade. And that is procurement that is happening in companies, right? It's spend that is going on all the time. And at the same time, you have the pressures of building not just productive, but also inclusive and ethical supply chains. So then it starts to become logical that you're saying, well, wouldn't it be simpler? It's not simple, but wouldn't it be an idea to start embedding social enterprises and diverse suppliers into your supply chain, be it through direct spend or through indirect spend? And that's basically what we started doing. We started putting a stake in the ground and said, okay, we believe in this area. Let's divert spend that is happening at SAP anyway. Let's divert it towards social enterprises and diverse suppliers. And we created an initiative called 5 plus 5 by 25. But where it becomes even more interesting for us as a business, as a company, is that this is not just about our own procurement practices. As a B2B company that helps through our software other companies to run better and run at their best. We said, look, this is actually an opportunity for us to look at how SAP technology can enable our customers in achieving their sustainability goals, particularly in relation to inclusive and ethical supply chains. So it's a combination of both. So it's looking at our own procurement practices and it's driving product development and solution development of our SAP technology to enable our customers to achieve their sustainability goals. Thank you, Alex. And it's great to hear the story of that evolution, because I think what we've seen both in working in the social enterprise sector, which I acumen has done for 20 years, and many of you have been in that space for a long time. The way that we're really going to move social enterprises into the center of tackling some of these global challenges is really through an ecosystem approach. There isn't really one answer, one way. And it's one of the reasons why it's exciting to talk about this here at SoCAP, because I think this is a community that has been really building that ecosystem. But what's interesting is seeing that where there's been a lot of discussion about investment and bringing capital to those enterprises, we're now kind of expanding the conversation beyond capital. We have the kinds of capacity and networks and access to markets that can really make a difference. And so we're, again, hearing examples of that, and I want to pull those themes out, because I think within this community we have a lot of the actors that are looking at pieces of the puzzle, and if we can bring them together, and frankly bring corporations in in a much bigger way, I think that's when we'll see the real emergence of this sector as a player on the global stage in tackling these issues. So I wanted to just go back for a second, and I want to get into, and I've seen some questions coming up in the chat, kind of the question of how. And one of the things that our research showed us is that this is already happening. We found 100 great examples of where corporations are sourcing from social enterprises, and we encourage people to check them out. We'll put in the chat a link to a microsite that actually includes those 100 examples, and you can learn more about the industries and geographies that they represent, but also the companies that they work with, which I think is a really great sense of the diversity, both on the social enterprise side and on the corporate side. But I think what folks are really interested in is sort of how does this really work, and that's often where, you know, earlier stage social enterprises struggle to say how do you break through. So I'd love to hear a little bit from you, Asa, when you think about building the infrastructure within IKEA that enables us to bridge the divide, particularly for earlier stage companies. And then I'll ask the same question of you, Sumita, kind of how do you start that journey? Yeah, I think you're going straight to the point, because I guess the first relationship is the hardest. And making it to that corporate-ready level is the most tricky part, because you don't have the proof of your viability yet. And I know that social businesses like Rangsutra and others, they struggle to get that first capital and to find impact investors that can work with a mix of grants and loans and later on equity. So when we started, of course, the pure size of IKEA makes it even more challenging. I would say I think there are a lot of social businesses out there that are corporate-ready that you can do business with immediately. But when it comes to huge scale, we actually had to set up some special business leaders that were working with the social businesses and developing their different capabilities in partnership. So bringing people on the ground that know about design, what do our customers want and like, and then combining that sitting on the floor with the artisans and seeing what are the capabilities of the artisans and how can we merge this to something that is something our customers want to buy, not because it's from a village, but because it's a beautiful product that they would really love to have in their house. And then it's a sustainable relationship. So there were many things like that. Of course, there are many aspects of compliance, where is the material from, how it is being produced, all the ERP questions and things that you come across when you work with bigger companies. So we really had like a step-by-step approach going through the different steps of doing business together. And I know, Sumit, I think I can mention how much you have grown over the last seven, eight years. I think you have grown from producing 5,000 pieces to maybe three of our stores. And they were there for six weeks to producing 700,000 products to all of our stores around the world. So it's an amazing journey, but it does take investment. It is not really business as usual for us nowadays, maybe more so, but in the beginning there is a lot of partnership, hand-holding, mentoring, co-investment in both time and resources. Yeah, that's a powerful story because as you said, it's a real journey. So for you, Sumita, how has it been on the other side of that journey of how you've been able to build the relationship and how did you even make that initial connection with Ikea? Yeah, that's interesting. Actually, the first time I met anyone from Ikea was at a workshop. We were doing this project on the economic empowerment of women in a certain eastern part of our country. And at one of these workshops for our craft managers these are artisan leaders, women who showed leadership. We met with the Ikea team because Ikea was involved in the funding of the project indirectly to us. And there we made a connection and sort of two years later with many interactions once the women found their strength, found their voice, built up the skills to make their products. We actually took a chance. We were quite ambitious and told Ikea that okay, now the training is done, investment has been made in building capacities. Now take a chance, give us an order. And I must say that Ikea was, the team was very brave. I must say to give us an order because we really did not have much on the ground. Yes, there were a bunch of 200 very inspiring, bold, confident women who said we can do it, we can make the order. So it started off like that step by step, literally step by step. And I think it was, at no stage was it just a transaction in the sense of here's an order and you fulfill it and you get the money etc. But it was a long process of really a lot of a lot of training and mentoring by the Ikea team. And for us to ensure that women from villages are able to make products to supply globally. Initially we weren't sure, but it was, it has been a great, I won't say, as I mentioned the theory of change, it has been really a practice of change and social development, social and economic empowerment, which went side by side. And it's been a great journey, I must say. It's been, of course we've had our challenges, we've had our tough moments, but all in all it's been, it's been great. And I think another factor which really helped has been the trust, you know, trust on both sides to ensure that, you know, to sort of be open about any problems that are facing, be transparent, and then, you know, make the changes as and where needed. So yes, that's how we started and we are really thrilled to be growing along with Ikea and we hope to grow even more. Thank you, Sumita. It's great to see the success and I think inspiring to many others. I wanted to ask you, Alex, as you've really started to work on this commitment as early days, what have you found to make a difference in, again, sort of crossing that initial threshold of helping to link companies into your business or if you've seen them engaging effectively with other companies that are in your networks? That's a good question. And I see that there's some similar questions in the chat as well, right? How do we connect? How do we become a supplier? I think what helped us was understanding the landscape of the social enterprise sector and particularly understanding what intermediary organizations can actually support us, right? Because honestly, one of the most difficult challenges for us as a corporate is identifying social enterprises and verifying them for them to actually work with us, right? And we need intermediary organizations, be it Acumen or in the US by Social USA or Social Enterprise UK in the UK. We need organizations like that who understand the landscape of social enterprises and who also understand how to connect us to those enterprises. So I think my first advice is always for a social enterprise who believes that they're corporate ready, make sure you become part of those kind of ecosystems that are out there, be it national ecosystems, so national associations, or then more global associations and programs like what Unilever has built up with Transform or we have built up a partnership with Moving Worlds called Esgrid, because once you enter those kinds of programs, it immediately augments your visibility towards corporates. And I think that's what's so important, right? You need to have that visibility, otherwise it always becomes this one-on-one connection. So that is something that we have learned a lot from, just knowing that we have to partner, we have to collaborate, not just within the social enterprise sector, but frankly also within the corporate sector. We have learned so much from IKEA, from Unilever, from EY that we wouldn't have been able to do by ourselves. So never be too afraid to build alliances, right, and build partnerships across sectors, but also within the corporate sector to drive things forward. Yeah, I think there's a major need for that, and we're starting to see that momentum. All of us got connected through the World Economic Forum's COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, and it was easier to see where these threads converge so that we could actually do that kind of knowledge sharing, but I just wanted to reinforce the points that each of you made was the value of those networks. And we've mentioned a few, but just again, these are intermediaries and alliances that are really designed to help bridge some of those gaps in terms of visibility and access and often capacity. So, you know, we're thinking of Euclid Network in Europe, the Social Enterprise World Forum, Moving Worlds, Transform, Andy, each of these that create that extra visibility and can often provide other resources like capacity building. But one of the things that I think could create additional breakthroughs is for investors who support early-stage entrepreneurs to be thinking about the role that they can play in strengthening those networks. And it's something that we've been asking ourselves at Acumen. How do we really leverage the networks that we have to support entrepreneurs beyond their sort of tackling their immediate business challenges but to really build that access to market? And I think it's a really interesting question for some of the investors at SoCAP to reflect on the role that they can play to really help tap into this movement around social procurement and social sourcing. So, I wanted to touch for a second on something that I think is really relevant, particularly for some of the social enterprises that might be with us. The question of social impact and also you touched on this, but when we did our research we were really amazed to see how many enterprises are not only creating impact, but they're also tracking it. They are tracking against the SDGs. They are doing their own impact measurement. They work sometimes with third parties who can validate that impact. And one of the challenges that came up was how do we get companies to really recognize and value that impact within the scope of their business. So, I was just curious to see how some of you have made social impact an important factor in guiding business decisions because I think that makes a big difference in opening doors for social enterprises that are really prepared to deliver that impact. Maybe also you could start. Yeah, and I think that is the key question to get the whole movement going. So, what is the S in the ESG? And what is it beyond compliance? What is it when we talk about development and tackling, for instance, the growing inequalities? So, it's much easier to have a digital goal like carbon dioxide or no carbon dioxide. That's very easy to measure. It's either one or zero. But what is a social target? And I wouldn't say that we have a perfect answer to that. I know how we work with IKEA social entrepreneurship. As I mentioned, we have a theory of change. It is actually in the simplified version on our website. I will post the link in the chat later. But I do think it's important to acknowledge that social change takes time. You really need to be in it for the long term. It's long term partnerships that will create impact. Impact is nothing that you can drive over a year or two. You really need to have your vision clear. What is it that might be part of transforming? And then put some pathways and make sure that you measure, you monitor, you evaluate and you do long term evaluations as well. Thank you, Asa. And how about for you, Alex? What are some of the social impact measurements that you've focused on to really help illustrate the value proposition for working with social enterprises? So we've put it into the context of, and again, this probably has to do with us being a tech company who deals with a lot of data. We've put it in the context of the issue of traceability in the supply chain. Anyone who's involved in that knows that it's a complex issue. It's not solved. We have a long way to go with that. And there's at times not just in transparency, but there's different data sources and sometimes even an overload of data, right? So if you as a company, if you need to demonstrate, and maybe this goes more into sort of the risk mitigation and compliance side, but sometimes it's a good way to start. If you're struggling with demonstrating transparency and traceability in your supply chain, our argument is basically a good way to start overcoming that is using the proxy of social enterprises. Because social enterprises, you know, they are mission driven first, right? Social impact is the first goal that they want to reach. It's not necessarily financial performance. So if that is the case, and the other thing that we've also seen, and I think your research also shows that is MENA, is that often social enterprises can actually also be considered inclusive businesses. Not always, but most of the time, right? So if that is the case and you're lacking transparency and traceability in your supply chain, doing business with social enterprises makes a lot of sense. Because that you will automatically have transparency. You know automatically that you're compliant, right? And that you're mitigating risk by working with social enterprises. So this is maybe just a different angle to it. But I think it's one that could potentially work quite well at the moment, especially in light of all of these regulations that are coming to force. You know, in Germany, for example, where I'm based, the German Parliament has ratified the Supply Chain Act, which is going to come into force I think in 2023. And of course it primarily looks at risk mitigation and compliance with regards to an ethical supply chain. But it's a good way to start because it means that businesses have to start looking into it. And if you as a social business, social enterprise can position yourself against that, then it actually provides an interesting value proposition, at least to get the foot in the door. Yeah, I think that's a great point, Alex, that the, in some ways the landscape of risk has changed from, you know, your safest if you have a few big suppliers and they'll sort of work out the details and everything's very predictable to now saying, wait, if we don't have visibility, if we don't have direct access, if we are getting information on what this really means at the end of the line, or upstream supply chain, we are at risk. And that is, I think, an opportunity for social enterprises to really provide huge value add as new risks are emerging around accountability, on climate inclusion, diversity, et cetera. So I would love to open this up now to questions from the audience, although we've been seeing them as we go. I always have a ton of questions I can ask because I find this so fascinating. So we're waiting for questions to come in, and please, there's no question that is sort of off topic, whether you're looking at this as an investor, as an entrepreneur, as an intermediary, as a corporation, please let us know your questions. But before, since I don't have anyone banging down the door at the moment, I did want to ask you, Sumita, if you were to give some advice to social enterprises that want to follow a similar path, what would you tell them? What do you wish you might have known as you started your journey that you now know? Yeah, I think what Alexandra mentioned a bit earlier, that social enterprises, our mission is social change. Our mission is empowerment of marginalized people. And the way that we do it is through increasing incomes, through the economic financial route. So one of the things that has really helped us was being open to scale up. Because initially when we started, I was my team and I were in the not-for-profit mode where we are comfortable with small businesses and pilot projects, which work. But then ultimately to make it sustainable, as someone mentioned in the chat box, you have to drive sales. So although we were resistant in the beginning and our angel investor actually who invested in us was pushing us to do this. And after a little resistance, we did it. And that's what really helped us in the sense of by scaling up, you have what is called, you have the benefits of economies of scale. And in our case, in our country, we have so many women who are skilled, women and men, but especially women who are very skilled. And we find that investing in the back end, in the sense that the normal thing is to do is to make good products and market it and try and get orders. But what we did really was to focus on developing the supply side of it. Creating spaces for women, safe spaces for women to work out of in their villages. Earlier they were working from home. So we created spaces for them in their villages to work out of where they could, where we did not run into quality problems because we could supervise them better. They also their output was better because at home they get disturbed. Someone wants tea, someone wants milk, et cetera. So I think that's one first thing that I would say is to really to focus on what we are good at, which is really the back end and strengthening that, developing the back end, creating capacity, building infrastructure, doing the trainings. For example, while earning incomes is the first thing that all the women and men artisans want. What we do is we find those who show leadership and we have special trainings for them where they can go up the skill matrix, become managers, become members of our board and also of course invest in the company once they are earning enough and they have money to invest. So I think that is the main advice I would give is that invest in the people with whose lives you want to make a transformation in. So Mita, one of the things that strikes me as you describe your business model and how you've scaled it is that you continuously go back to the question of what are we doing that supports women in this community and how are we putting them at the center? We had a chance to work with EY this past year in developing an inclusive business playbook and I feel like you could have written the playbook because again you keep asking yourself what are we doing to create not just opportunity or decreased risk but to really change the dynamic, change the power structure, create opportunities that weren't there before and always ask that question, what does this mean for the women that we want to serve? So frankly one of the biggest reasons that we're excited to see more of this collaboration between corporations and social enterprises at the core of their business is we think this could be part of this bigger transformation. So again it isn't just hitting the numbers or reducing risk but it becomes about how do we change business itself by having a different conversation about the role of business? So every time I hear social enterprises talking as if it's just a given of course the purpose of your business is to support the opportunities and needs of these women imagine if every business sort of thought that way and really centered on the most vulnerable people that that business touches and how to serve their interests. So again just super inspired I'm glad you could be with us today. I wanted to go to a question that did come in earlier that's a bit kind of a detail question but I think a really important one when companies are looking at operating in markets where there might be higher risks around corruption or governance how do you find ways to work with social enterprises to really help them scale despite some of those challenges and I'm just curious because corruption is an issue that comes up a lot and I think it shows up differently in different industries but how folks tackle that and I think Aki I know has shared or has developed that resource for entrepreneurs within that do you touch on issues of corruption and governance and how has that come up I guess for both Aki and SAP in response to Mark's question. Yes of course that's very important question and also part of our code of conduct I actually posted a link to that if someone wants to read it in more detail later and also how we work with it but I think it's about working together and safeguarding that the right procedures and processes and the organizational setups are in place but also I think as Sumita was referring to when it comes to trust also building the trust of both sides being transparent if something happens things can happen but as long as we are open and transparent we can always tackle them and also be aligned on what are the topics that we do not accept happening corruption or child labour or workplaces that are not safe for the workers those critical basic topics that need to work for the co-workers to have a safe environment to live in and for us to be able to do business with them so following the code of conduct and doing it together in a more development approach than doing a compliance test one and zero so how can we solve this what is it and how can we find a pathway to develop it but what we also do I saw that question as well is that we do run accelerators for instance together with Acumen where we actually focus in on topics that are important if you want to do business with a corporate and that could be a hands-on training but we also have co-worker engagement on our side where our business people becomes coaches and can guide and support social entrepreneurs into developing themselves into the next level great and Alex similarly for you have you found any particularly effective ways of supporting organizations around some of those compliance or governance challenges yeah I'll be honest that we haven't run into that much yet but that's only because we've only just started our journey and at the moment we've taken a market by market approach so we're sort of taking country by country that's going to change in about a year's time and then it's definitely something we have to look into more closely but I think similarly to what also was saying the way that we're approaching it is is we're basically saying that we are very aware that we can just say oh let's procure from social enterprises and let's you know let's switch we know that we have to invest just as much if not even more in capacity building for social enterprises and also in market development right so so very honestly what happens is that you try to develop programs like also was mentioning in terms of accelerators that help create that bridge for social enterprises to become corporate ready in every sense of the word and frankly once you're in those kinds of programs automatically trust starts to build because you're exposed to each other you might not have a partnership yet directly with each other but you are very aware of each other and you're starting conversations you start diving deeper into into the work with each other and I think because of that you have a different kind of foundation where that trust that Sumita was also talking about sort of takes over in terms of the difficulties that you might face otherwise from a market perspective right I think it's a very honest response right and we've had some questions about you know how do you work with companies that may not yet have had access to capital is there a role for grant funding which is a point that Joanne Sonnenschein raised which I think is really important and I think both of your organizations have looked at that in some ways as we come to time I want to emphasize I feel like the work that we've been able to do with IKEA, with SAP and a few others kind of paints this really optimistic picture where companies have decided that social impact is core to their corporate purpose and it is something that they feel accountable to my hope is that this can inspire a lot of other companies to see not only the kind of moral need but also the opportunity where companies are really distinguishing themselves by being able to make kinds of products available it's something that we know the benefits to corporations has been tremendous the way they engage their employees the way that investors look at their company these are things that we know are creating value on the corporate side and on the social enterprise side as well creating huge opportunities for growth but it does take a kind of leap of faith so again it's exciting to hear how all of you have done that and how you champion that within your own organizations and frankly the more people come to the table including investors who can help pave the way whether with seed funding or growth capital or working capital what we saw in our research is it makes all the difference for social enterprises to be able to seize on these opportunities to prepare themselves for corporate relationships so everybody has a part to play we hope that the resources that have been shared by our panelists and by a lot of the participants will be helpful to those and please do kind of think about ways to stay connected certainly there's a lot of interest in this topic at the covid response alliance for social entrepreneurs but hopefully we've indicated some other useful tools and resources that people can tap into and I just really want to thank everybody for their time for sharing their stories for your honesty and to everyone who joined us as we wrap up but thank you all once again have a great rest of the day