Platform Delivers Conscious Consumers to Aussie Social Enterprises

A new online service linking conscious consumers directly with Australian social enterprises has been launched by Social Traders, a social enterprise development organisation.

Mindy Leow, Project Manager at Social Traders, said the vision behind Good Spender was to promote social enterprises to consumers all over Australia.

“It addresses gaps – it helps social enterprises access new markets and enables them to take the products to a new channel of customers, which is essential,” Leow said.

“We know consumers are interested in using their purchasing power to do good. Our goal is to have every social enterprise with a product on Good Spender.”

Social Traders undertakes a screening process of organisations wishing to list on the site. Once approved, social enterprises are able to list on the site for free and pay a small commission towards maintenance of the platform when their products sell.

Leow said the online space could be further leveraged as a means for social enterprises to access consumers.

“There are certainly social enterprises running successful online shops,” she said. ”However, most typically don’t sell online because of a lack of skills and resources to create a world-class online shop. It’s a very big investment for many organisations.”

Good Spender, Leow said, aggregates investment so that many enterprises can benefit collectively.

According to Leow, ongoing investment in helping social enterprises to market themselves and their products is crucial to capacity-building organisations like Social Traders.

“[Building on Good Spender] what we can bring is knowledge of what online consumers want to see. There are tools and resources for social enterprises, and we are there to support them,” she said.

“Just because you have a website, it doesn’t mean people will come.”

The online marketplace is the result of Social Traders’ three year partnership with Australia Post. Social Traders was announced as one of the mail giant’s seven national community partners earlier this year.

“The partnership with Australia Post has been fantastic for us. We’re going out through mainstream media with a solid national campaign,” Leow said.

“We really hope people will engage this Christmas, by using their spend to change people’s lives.”

“We’re offering free shipping until Wednesday midnight as part of our platform launch.”  

Visit Good Spender here. Social traders is offering free shipping today.