Inclusive business & employment
Impact Sourcing
Definition
Impact sourcing is a procurement and employment practice in which companies intentionally hire people from disadvantaged groups — such as low-income, rural, or marginalised communities — into business process services and IT work, providing career paths, fair wages, and transferable skills. Developed with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and promoted by the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition, it treats service outsourcing as a deliberate job-creation and inclusion mechanism rather than purely a cost decision.
References
Supports definition and framing.
Overview
What it means
Impact sourcing sits between corporate social responsibility and core procurement: the jobs are real commercial work — data services, customer support, back-office processing — but supplier selection is used to direct opportunity toward workers excluded from formal employment.
Evidence cited by practitioners includes lower attrition and engaged workforces, which is why the model is argued on business as well as social terms. It connects supply-chain sustainability to the "S" in ESG through purchasing decisions.
How it is used
Applied in BPO/ITO procurement, supplier diversity programmes, and inclusive-business strategies; tracked by industry groups with job-creation commitments.
Why it matters
It shows how routine buying decisions can be redesigned to distribute the gains of the digital economy more fairly.