The World Economic Forum's Refugee Employment Alliance has a collective commitment to hire 125,000 refugees by 2027. IKEA's Ingka Group has supported 3,700 refugees in workforce integration since 2019. LinkedIn expanded its IRC partnership to Mexico City in 2024.
These are genuine commitments. They create real jobs, real income, and real stability for refugee families.
They are also, fundamentally, about employing refugees — integrating them into existing corporate structures as workers.
Employment inclusion matters. But it has a ceiling. A refugee hired into a warehouse job earns wages. A refugee whose business gets a supplier contract builds equity, creates jobs, and compounds wealth. The economic outcomes are not in the same category.
The procurement gap
Corporate refugee inclusion programs almost universally focus on hiring. Procurement — buying goods and services from refugee-owned businesses — is the exception, not the rule.
This is not because procurement doesn't work. A 2024 World Bank study (the PS4R analysis) examined corporate refugee employment models across multiple countries and found that supplier and vendor relationships with refugee-owned businesses produced stronger long-term economic outcomes than employment alone — while also meeting corporate supplier diversity goals and ESG reporting requirements.
The barrier is not motivation. Most corporate sustainability teams are genuinely interested in refugee supplier relationships when the opportunity is presented clearly. The barrier is pipeline.
Corporations don't have a mechanism to find refugee-owned vendors who are procurement-ready, and refugee entrepreneurs don't have a pathway into corporate procurement systems.
What procurement-ready looks like
A refugee entrepreneur becomes procurement-ready when they have:
- A registered business entity with a business bank account and EIN
- Documented revenue history (even informal — 12+ months of bank statements)
- Capacity to fulfill contracts at the volume a corporate buyer needs
- Insurance coverage (general liability, at minimum)
- A clear product or service offering with pricing
Most refugee entrepreneurs who complete a structured bootcamp program are at or near this threshold. What they lack is the introduction.
The model that works
Corporate inclusion programs that produce procurement outcomes share a common structure:
- Program partnership — the corporation partners with a refugee entrepreneurship program (not a hiring pipeline) to identify procurement-ready vendors
- Category-specific matching — procurement teams identify categories where refugee-owned businesses can realistically compete (food services, cleaning and facilities, logistics, translation, digital services, construction trades)
- Pilot contracts — first contracts are small and mentored, with explicit feedback loops to help the refugee business meet corporate quality and compliance requirements
- Scale — successful pilot vendors are added to the approved supplier list and eligible for larger contracts
IKEA's supplier development model, adapted for refugee entrepreneurs in several EU markets, has demonstrated that this structure works at scale. The US market has not yet produced an equivalent model at meaningful volume.
What Rock Forward is building
Rock Forward's corporate partnership track is designed around procurement, not only hiring. We are building a procurement-ready vendor directory of Rock Forward graduates — organized by service category and geography — that corporate partners can access directly.
If your organization is interested in building a refugee supplier pipeline, start here: our contact page
The refugees are ready. The question is whether corporate America is willing to buy, not just hire.
Sources: WEF Refugee Employment Alliance; World Bank — Refugee Employment PS4R Study, 2024; IRC — Businesses That Empower Refugee Success