Supply Nation and Social Traders: what their certification establishes
Both help buyers identify suppliers. They verify different things, and the difference is the most useful lesson Australia has for anyone thinking about a third.
Disclosure. Just Gold, which funds and publishes Pride in Business, has been a Social Traders certified social enterprise since 2019. It has also worked with Social Traders as a client, including producing its digital awards and providing photography and video for Convene 2026.
Put two certificates side by side on a buyer’s desk. One verifies an enterprise’s Indigenous ownership and control. The other verifies its social enterprise status. Both may matter to the same procurement, but they answer different questions, and the two organisations behind them have arrived at their answers by different routes.
Supply Nation: ownership, management and control
Supply Nation operates Indigenous Business Direct and distinguishes between registration and certification. Certification requires majority Indigenous ownership, management and control, assessed through business and ownership records, governance information and an interview or site visit. The separation of those three tests is the important part. A share register shows who holds an interest. It does not show how decisions are made, and Supply Nation’s process is built to examine both.
Verification does not stop at the first application. Supply Nation describes continuing checks, including ownership updates and audits, and from 2026 every Certified Supplier completes an annual face to face interview with an Indigenous Business Officer. Certification describes a business that must keep meeting the standard, not a fact established once and left alone. Registration and certification are free for eligible Indigenous businesses.
Government eligibility is a related but separate matter. From 1 July 2026 the Commonwealth’s Indigenous Procurement Policy requires at least 51 per cent First Nations ownership and control, or registration with the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, with an earlier eligibility route still available during transition. A change in government policy is not an automatic rewrite of a certifier’s rules, and both supplier and buyer need to check which requirement applies to their transaction. But the direction of travel is the same in both: tighter, more specific, more interested in control than in headcount.
Social Traders: purpose and the use of trade
Social Traders tests something else entirely. Its standard concerns whether the business has a defined social, cultural or environmental purpose, whether it trades, and whether it applies its resources to that purpose. The assessment looks at how the enterprise actually operates rather than accepting a description from its website. A certified enterprise can be privately owned or take another eligible legal form; it is the model that has to satisfy the standard, not the identity of the owners.
Certification is currently free. Social Traders builds demand from the other side, by signing business and government members who commit to buying from certified enterprises, connecting the two, and reporting the resulting spend each year. Certification and a contract remain separate steps, and Social Traders is clear about that. But the marketplace structure is what makes the model work: certified suppliers on one side, paying members on the other, and an intermediary counting the result.
What the comparison tells you
These are not rival models, and the sector loses something when it treats them that way. They are the two available routes to the same destination. Supply Nation’s force comes from a government target with public reporting attached, which makes it durable and makes it dependent on the policy continuing. Social Traders’ force comes from members who pay because they want the outcome, which makes it faster to build and vulnerable in a bad year. Both are free or close to free for the supplier, and both are funded from the buyer side. That structural fact is the one most discussions of certification miss. The suppliers are the product. The buyers are the customer.
For anyone examining LGBTIQA+ supplier recognition, the questions this raises are practical rather than philosophical. What exactly would be verified, and by whom? Who pays for that work? How does a small supplier challenge an error? What happens when ownership changes? What is passed to buyers, and what is kept private? Copying a percentage from an existing standard settles none of that, and neither does building a directory. The value of these two examples is the detail they make visible: evidence, ongoing administration, and the gap between qualifying and being bought from. The Pride in Business research can examine all of that without presupposing that Australia needs another certifier.
Sources
- Supply Nation. How we verify Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses.
- Supply Nation. Frequently asked questions for Indigenous businesses.
- National Indigenous Australians Agency. The Indigenous Procurement Policy is changing: current transition arrangements.
- Social Traders. Social Enterprise Certification: full guidance notes, August 2025.
- Social Traders. Social enterprise certification.
- Social Traders. FY25 Impact Report, pages 8, 9 and 17.
Source pages last checked 19 September 2026.
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