Ethical and sustainable sourcing standards

The Salvation Army is committed to ethical and sustainable procurement.

The purpose of these standards is to ensure that The Salvation Army only purchase goods and services that are produced and delivered under labour conditions that meet our principals, do not involve the abuse or exploitation of any person and have the least negative impact on climate change and the environment. Such considerations will form part of the evaluation and selection criteria for all goods and services purchased by The Salvation Army.

In addition, The Salvation Army will seek alternative sources where the conduct of suppliers demonstrably violates the basic rights of The Salvation Army’s intended beneficiaries, and there is no willingness to address the situation within a reasonable time period.

Supplier Principles Agreement

All suppliers who work with The Salvation Army will be expected to comply with The Salvation Army’s Supplier Conduct Principles Agreement. Compliance with this is a contractual obligation of working with The Salvation Army and included in our Purchase Terms and Conditions.

These principles are based on Ethical Trade Initiative Base Code, United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Core Conventions and cover areas such as the prevention of forced labour, discrimination, and environmental damage.

Working with Suppliers

Meeting our sourcing standards is a two-way process which requires open dialogue and mutual understanding.

Using a risk based approach The Salvation Army pre-qualifies its suppliers to ensure that they exhibit ethical and sustainable values, behaviours and processes. Satisfactory responses to this will be required to become and remain as a supplier to The Salvation Army. Approved suppliers will be required to periodically review their responses to ensures that they remain up to date.

In certain situations, the Salvation Army will monitor compliance through a systematic, risk-based approach which can include both announced and unannounced site visits.

The Salvation Army is committed to working with suppliers to support them in improving their performance and standards in this area. However, The Salvation Army will terminate supplier relationships where serious breaches of the policy persist after reasonable attempts have been made to work with the supplier to implement improvements, and where there is no reasonable prospect of securing improvements. Such terminations will be carried out in a responsible way.

Working with Building and Property Suppliers

After 1 September 2019 The Salvation Army will have three pre-qualification requirements for its Building and Property Suppliers:

• Constructionline Gold Status membership: www.constructionline.co.uk/join-today. Please enter code 1QGLVV when prompted ‘reason for signing up ‘ or ‘reason for upgrading account’ and this will highlight you to us;
• Signature of the TSA Procurement Terms and Conditions short form Contract (detailed below);
• Signature of the TSA Supplier Conduct Principals agreement (detailed below).

Doing business with The Salvation Army - steps to take

Suppliers are asked to review the standard principles and:

• Consider how they fit with your own business practices as well as those of your own suppliers
• Take any action necessary to comply (for example, maintaining appropriate records and documentation, and ensuring that any statements of business principles and policies fully address these issues)
• Contact us if you need further clarification of our expectations: procurement@salvationarmy.org.uk.