Shelter Savers

Women’s Shelters Canada (WSC) aims to leverage the collective buying power represented by the $120 million in spending by shelters through Shelter Savers – a group-buying program that benefits 500+ individual women’s shelters across Canada – to help secure deeper discounts for individual shelters, and provide undesignated dollars to support the work of WSC. Shelter Savers is looking to explore the potential to adapt the successful Co-Op Cost Cutters model, which has been profitably run by the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto for over 20 years. The Co-op Cost Cutters program provides members with deep discounts on purchases on a wide variety of items from banking services and accounting software, to business supplies and website development, to fire protection systems, plumbing services and water heaters, paint, and building materials. The program covers both things that are frequently purchased as well as big-ticket but less frequently purchased items.

Grant amount: $50,000