Social entrepreneurship made easy

Welcome to another week of news about the fruits of our projects' cooperation! In the coming five days, we dive into the successes of our projects working on SME competitiveness.

We have 66 projects working on improving the competitiveness of SMEs in various ways. Some focus on their internationalisation, others look at financial support to entrepreneurs. Today we'll have a look at the support to social enterprises.

RaiSE boosts social entrepreneurship

The RaiSE project partners strive to enhance the competitiveness of social enterprises in their regions. They share good ideas and solutions and work together on improving their regional policies and strategies boosting social entrepreneurship.

Watch a story about one of the partner's success in our new web documentary:

What did they achieve?

The partner from Örebro Region in Sweden brought many inspiring ideas into their new regional development strategy, signed in spring 2018.

The strategy has changed the emphasis and sees social enterprises as not only contributing to the region’s economic growth but also doing something really meaningful for people in dire situations. The strategy wants social enterprises to put the social goal first, measure the effects and reinvest the profits in their core social activities.

How?

The inspiration came from several good practices shared among RaiSE project partners!

Spain inspired Örebro Region to emphasise the importance of social enterprises within the regional context. In particular Aracoop Internacional showed the importance of support and collaboration of the main social economy stakeholders in raising the profile of social enterprises and developing new policies for them. In addition, they learned more about the methods and models for evaluating social impact.

Scotland shared ideas on how to develop support structure for social enterprises. For example, the Social Enterprise Academy helps people through learning programmes across Scotland. These programmes help people maximise their abilities to build sustainable enterprises and achieve better social impact.

Ireland's good practices in well-structured financial support system made Örebro Region think about new approaches to the financial needs of social enterprises. Clann Credo, Ireland’s leading Community Loan Finance provider, and the Social Finance Foundation, a provider of loan funding for community organisations and social enterprises, are just two of them.

There's much more about RaiSE!

Improvements in social entrepreneurship do not happen only in Sweden. Have a look at an interview with the project lead partner from Spain and the inspiration they found for their regional action plan. One comes from Sweden too.

Moreover, the European Commission features RaiSE project in their project database. A brief description of the project's work is available for all to see. Have a look too!

What’s next?

Can’t wait to know more? Then watch this space. We’ll be publishing results on SME competitiveness topics all week!

• Boosting entrepreneurship all across Europe
• Bringing innovation to SMEs thanks to cooperation
• Making public support to SMEs more effective
• Designing new financial instruments for SMEs

Consider signing up for a workshop by the Policy Learning Platform about Mastering digital transformation of business support on 27 November in Brussels.

Are you also interested in research and innovation? Check the series of articles from last week, starting with a story of RESET project.

If you still want more, go to our results page and see other achievements that can inspire you.