Social procurement in Frankston operates under the Victorian Social Procurement Framework, the same obligations that apply across the state. What differs is delivery. A place-based approach draws on Frankston's local social enterprises and Bunurong businesses, uses the supplier list local councils have built together, and depends on consistent social procurement reporting to evidence the outcomes a project delivers.
Social procurement in Frankston sits under the same policy as any other Victorian project. The Victorian Social Procurement Framework applies to government-funded work above the relevant threshold regardless of location, setting targets for spend with social benefit suppliers and for the participation of priority workers.
What changes locally is not the obligation but how it is best met. Frankston is a major centre for Melbourne's south-east and the gateway to the Mornington Peninsula, with its own established community organisations and pockets of disadvantage. Meeting social procurement targets here depends on engaging the capability that already exists in the local area.
The Frankston Social Enterprise and Innovation Hub is the natural starting point. Its mission is to enable organisations and individuals to start up and scale social enterprises across the south-east of Melbourne, with a vision of a region renowned for enterprise doing good for people, place and planet. The Hub is home to a community of purpose-driven businesses, and it connects buyers with local social enterprises across Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula.
The region offers genuine, procurable capability, including examples such as Willum Warrain, an Aboriginal social enterprise that offers cultural awareness training and cultivates native plants to the region for retail and wholesale purchase.
The Centre for Social Impact demonstrates that social enterprises are a significant part of the state economy, employing around 60,000 people in Victoria and generating $5.2 billion each year, and the Frankston region contributes to that base.
Local councils are governed by different policy requirements to state agencies, so rather than sitting under a single mandate they are guided by the Victorian Social Procurement Framework while operating their own social procurement policies. In Melbourne's south-east, several councils have collaborated to develop a shared panel of companies under a joint social procurement initiative, including Frankston City Council, Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and Bayside City Council.
The result is a Social Procurement Supplier List of 28 organisations that operate in line with social procurement principles, which tenderers are encouraged to use to identify partnering opportunities. Details are available on the Frankston City Council social procurement page.
It is encouraging to see councils collaborate in this way. A shared panel delivers better outcomes than each council building its own, because it gives local social enterprises a larger and more accessible market, and gives contractors a single, verified source to procure from and report against.
Frankston sits on the land of the Bunurong people of the Kulin Nation. Engaging Bunurong businesses, alongside the Bunurong Land Council and other local Aboriginal enterprises, contributes to Aboriginal business spend outcomes while keeping value on the Country the project sits within. Early engagement matters, because supplier relationships of this kind are built well before a tender, not after award.
The most effective approach does not simply ask which suppliers are available, but where the social value will actually land. That is the case for place-based procurement.
In Frankston, that means prioritising employment for local jobseekers who face barriers to work, and matching supplier engagement to the communities the project affects. A workforce participation target met by employing a local resident delivers more genuine benefit than the same target met from outside the area, and it produces a stronger, more defensible local-benefit story for the government client.
There is a lot of positive activity to build on in Frankston: capable local social enterprises, a shared council supplier list, and real opportunities to deliver local benefit. Making the most of it depends on getting the governance of reporting right from the outset.
When social procurement data is captured consistently from the start of a project, across both suppliers and workforce, it becomes straightforward to demonstrate and communicate what the work actually delivered for the community. Putting that structure in place early, rather than assembling it at reporting time, is what closes the loop between the outcomes a program creates and the story a project can credibly tell about them. The SocialPro Social Procurement Reporting Playbook, which now includes the reporting time calculator, sets out how to establish that structure.
SocialPro is not only a system for measuring social procurement; it is a social enterprise in its own right, verified under the People and Planet First standard. That means engaging SocialPro can itself count as social enterprise spend under the Victorian Social Procurement Framework.
For a project team in Frankston, this has a practical benefit. Adopting SocialPro both improves how social procurement is reported and contributes to the very outcomes being reported, so the reporting system and the social spend it records point in the same direction.
SocialPro is a system of record for social procurement, built to capture local spend and workforce data to the standard a government client or auditor expects.
Social procurement in Frankston is the same obligation that applies statewide, met through a deliberate, place-based approach that uses the local social enterprises, the shared council supplier list and the Aboriginal businesses the region already has. To see how SocialPro supports social procurement in Frankston and across Victoria, book a demo at socialpro.com.au.
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