After years of hard work, countless conversations with peers in the sector, feedback sessions, and design workshops; we got exciting news to share. We can start to build a working prototype of our responsible procurement platform, thanks to funding by the Philips Foundation. In this article we explain why we received it and how we will put it to good use.

The Philips Foundation granted a start-up grant to the procurement solution for aid professionals and businesses by Claire Barnhoorn, Jaime ter Linden and Robert Simpson. A start-up grant when all we have is still only an idea. ‘What convinced you this concept is worth it?’, we ask Margot Cooijmans, Director of the Philips Foundation.

‘This idea pricked right into the heart of our mission to provide people with access to good healthcare. The intention to allow aid organisations to buy better and more efficiently appealed to us. This platform can have a major positive impact on better spending of their budgets and time.’

1. Expert knowledge that integrates all aspects in one tender

The strength of the platform is two-sided. One strong point is that the system helps an NGO/humanitarian organisation to realise the best total solution based on a specific question and situation. Many NGOs lack the knowledge to do this well and then fall back on purchasing individual components at the lowest price, without regard to maintenance, repairs, availability of spare parts, performance, life-cycle, etc. In the long run, this often leads to failure or higher costs. This platform offers an answer to this, by including all of these aspects (optionally) in a composite tender, which can then be opened up to all suppliers in the field of that solution. 

2. More impact by cutting loss of time and costs

The second strength is that the system can prevent a situation in which – in similar or different crises – different people, from many organisations, have to solve the same question over and over again, with all the associated costs and loss of time. The saved costs and time can then be used to achieve more impact. That is where the interest lies for the Philips Foundation.

This funding will provide a working prototype of our catalogue and platform that connects problems to products in a complete solution. An important step, since we find that to get things started, we lack a convincing example of how the system will work. This first step is our jump start, which enables us to take all steps needed to get the platform up and running.

Thank you, Philips Foundation! We cannot wait to get started…