Public buyers now have a target to spend with community organisations

Here's a change worth two minutes of your attention if you run a charity, community group or social enterprise. The public sector now has a formal target to spend money directly with organisations like yours — not just a vague encouragement, a target that gets set and reported on. If you've ever felt invisible next to the big contractors, the rules just shifted a little in your favour.

What actually changed

Under Procurement Policy Note 001, in-scope central government bodies have to set a three-year target for direct spend with SMEs from 1 April 2025, and a two-year target for direct spend with VCSEs from 1 April 2026 — and report the results every year. "VCSE" stands for voluntary, community and social enterprise: charities, community groups, social enterprises and similar value-driven organisations that reinvest their surpluses into their mission (government definition here).

In plain terms: buyers can no longer treat spend with community organisations as a happy accident. It's a number they have to aim at and show their working on. That's a quiet but real lever — and it sits alongside the wider shift to "Most Advantageous Tender", where social value carries weight in the score rather than price alone.

Does this apply in Wales?

Worth being precise: PPN 001 covers in-scope UK central government contracting authorities, not devolved Welsh public bodies. In Wales, socially responsible procurement runs through the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act instead. But the direction of travel is the same everywhere: buyers are being pushed to open the door to smaller, mission-led organisations and to evidence the social value they bring. If you ever bid for, or subcontract on, work touching central government — or a Welsh framework following the same momentum — this matters to you.

The catch: being a good cause isn't enough

A target to spend with VCSEs doesn't mean cheques go out automatically. Buyers still have to justify where the money lands, and increasingly that justification is about social value and outcomes, not just status. The organisations that win are the ones that can answer two questions on the spot: what do you deliver, and what is it worth?

Most community organisations are brilliant at the first and stuck on the second. You know you ran the youth sessions, the volunteer days, the wellbeing groups — but when a commissioner asks for the value in pounds, the answer is often a shrug or a guess. That gap is exactly what gets you overlooked next to a contractor with a polished social value return.

What to do about it

Two things, both low-effort. First, make sure you're visible and identifiable as a VCSE — registered on the platforms buyers use, clear about your charitable or social-enterprise status. Second, start putting a costed figure against the work you already do, using recognised proxy values, so you can hand a commissioner evidence instead of a story.

That second part is where Owl Impact helps. Log a session — a group you ran, hours your volunteers gave, an outcome you supported — and it's costed against recognised proxy values into a clean, professional report. When a buyer with a VCSE target asks what your work is worth, you've got a number with a source behind it, ready to drop into a bid or a funder update.