Social enterprise platform has been launched in Lithuania
A new platform for social entrepreneurs and training resources has been launched by Enterprise Lithuania – a government SME support agency that is providing assistance to social enterprises as well:
Danish Minister for Business and Growth, Troels Lund Poulsen, launched the new Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth on February 23 2016.
The Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth is surposed to organize the dialogue between companies and stakeholders within the field of social responsibility and social economy and contribute to danish government policy development in the area.
The Dialog Forum’s purpose is to support companies’ efforts to take social responsibility and social enterprises work to create growth in a way that creates maximum value for eth individual company and for the community as a whole.
Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth will perform the following tasks:
Obtain, develop and disseminate international and national knowledge on trends within social responsibility and social enterprises.
Encourage corporate commitment to follow up on the UN World sustainable development objectives.
Promote partnerships for social responsibility and growth and social investments.
Host a series of roundtables to bring together companies and relevant stakeholders themed dialogues.
Contribute to government policy development in the area.
• Organise an annual conference in collaboration with relevant stakeholders on developments in the field.
Develop a yearly status to the Minister on developments in responsible corporate behavior and social enterprises as well as on the work of the Forum.
The new Dialogue Forum is composed of a total of 14 members incl. Chairman Dan Boyter who is a board member of Pressalit A / S and chairman of the Danish National Opera.
See members of the Dialogue Forum on Corporate Social Responsibility and Growth here
A STUDY ABOUT A SUITABLE BUSINESS MODEL FOR A CHARITY ORGANIZATION
WeCare is an Australian charity organization founded privately in 2011 to support a children’s home and later also a private primary school in Kahawa West, Nairobi.
The study objective was to find out what type of an operational model would best serve WeCare’s goals and what changes this would require regarding the operational model. The theory deals with the definition of the right type of a business model and value-based business development in charities and social projects.
The results of the study stated that the social business model fits the purposes of WeCare the best and that continuing studies should be conducted to test the performance of the business model and the sustainable development of the organization and the community.
Public procurement affects a large number of people, whether they are users of public services, workers involved in production and delivery, or staff of the buying organisation. Public authorities can engage in Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP) by buying ethical products and services, and by using public tenders to create socially just societies. Social entrepreneurship is one of the opportunities to engage in SRPP implementation.
The European Commission intends to facilitate the uptake of socially-responsible criteria in public procurement and to promote their use across the EU. But first, two main questions need to be answered: what SRPP really is and what are its known applications?
Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP) is a set of social considerations in public contracts to achieve positive social outcomes. SRPP is determined by the public sector and aims to address the impact on society of the goods, works and services and works purchased it.
Buying for Social Impact (BSI) supported by the European Commission has prepared the materials explaining the meaning and the role of SRPP in detail. Download a full compilation of the main things you need to know about Socially Responsible Public Procurement:
The source for more materials of the “Buying for Social Impact” project: https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/public-procurement/support-tools-public-buyers/social-procurement_en
This publication has been prepared within SENBS project No. 2020- 1-EE01-KA204-077999. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
As world is rapidly changing in face of the COVID-19 crisis we highly recommend you reading this article by Lior Ipp from Roddenberry Foundation, explaining how social entrepreneurs can act differently in current year.
5 ways social enterprise funders can act differently in 2021
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the fragility of global systems and created a new awareness around glaring inequities;
Many organizations, including the World Economic Forum’s COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs, are calling for a more urgent and intentional focus on “building back better”;
Funders have an opportunity and a duty to reimagine their roles in order to make grantmaking more equitable and move us towards the new normal.
The profound economic and social devastation caused by COVID-19 has placed the world in uncharted territory. The fragility and inequality of our core societal systems have come into sharp relief and the tools we use to bolster them have been tested in unprecedented ways.
With recovery efforts in full swing, many organizations including the World Economic Forum’s COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs are calling for a more urgent and intentional focus on “building back better”.
Amidst these efforts, many philanthropic institutions have revisited their funding strategies and priorities, committing billions of dollars and pledging to streamline and improve their funding processes. Indeed, the Alliance has highlighted five important actions that funders can take, including more collaborative, expedited and innovative models, that will move us towards a new normal.
5 actions from the COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs
Image: World Economic Forum
In our own work at The Roddenberry Foundation and through feedback from hundreds of social entrepreneurs involved in our +1 Global Fund, we’ve heard an appeal for funders to do things differently. As social entrepreneurs shift from survival to resilience, their priorities and obligations are changing. Mahila Housing Sewa Trust in India, a recent recipient of +1 funding, used its vast networks in 14 cities to help women and girls survive during the pandemic. As this organization looks ahead, the reality facing its constituents – lost wages, homelessness and long-term poverty – amidst weakened and broken systems is as daunting as the crisis itself.
The question now is less about how funders operated pre-COVID-19 or even our response in 2020, it’s about what’s next. In the past year, five important themes have emerged from our work that are worth considering as we all reimagine our roles beyond the pandemic:
1. Lean into trust For too long, we have accepted the trust deficit between grantors and grantees. We see it in risk-averse funding strategies, over-reliance on reporting, top-down decision-making and unnecessary demands on grantees. As we look ahead, the easiest way to (re)establish trust is to make the time-consuming mechanisms funders typically use – applications, interviews, deadlines and lengthy reports – more user-friendly or, better still, just eliminate them. If we intend to work alongside and in partnership with grantees, we need to take an honest look at the tools we use to identify, vet and select them.
2. Build an inclusive framework Access to funding is too often a result of social capital, access to information, and fundraising skills that are unavailable to many. Gender, race, geography and education all play a role in influencing who has access, so we need more democratic and transparent funding models that focus on reaching a more diverse pool of organizations and individuals. Without such adjustments, these grantees would be difficult to find, let alone fund. To make grant-making more equitable, it’s critical we consider alternatives for how and from where potential grantees are identified and selected.
The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurs in numbers
Image: World Economic Forum
3. Don’t reinvent the wheel We must recognize and take advantage of existing networks, efforts, and strategies – particularly those of our grantees – in support of new funding models. The year 2020 was a powerful reminder of the speed and creativity with which social entrepreneurs can pivot, amplify their work and use their networks to meet the challenges of a crisis. We should tap into and further support these new networks (such as Catalyst2030), collaborative frameworks (such as Alliance4Socent) and adaptive strategies that have emerged in recent months.
4. Shift the locus of power Confronting the underlying issues of inequality in our societal systems that have come to light in 2020 will require the expertise and insights of those who have a stake in seeing them dismantled or altered. One way we’ve done this is by placing social entrepreneurs at the centre of the funding process – by creating a space for genuine partnership that enables shared decision-making and accountability, promotes flexibility and transparency, and accepts experimentation and failure. This needs to become a standard approach for funders.
5. Make it local The hyper-local nature of the pandemic has meant that most interventions must account for variances in geographic, economic, political and public health systems across and within different countries and cities. The greatest need and opportunity to combat the long-term impact of the crisis is at the community level. It is crucial that we work hand-in-hand with our communities to understand their specific needs and priorities. as well as how we can jointly benefit from collaboration for years to come.
The call for more creative and efficient ways to fund social entrepreneurs is certainly not new; what is new is an awareness of the glaring inequities that have been brought to light and worsened by the pandemic.
As we’ve come to realize and reckon with the fragility of our systems and understand the magnitude of the crisis, so too must we consider what role we as funders want to play shaping and embracing a ‘new normal’. We have an opportunity and an obligation to do things differently; ensuring that we “build back better” will depend on it.
Source: https://www.weforum.org/
This publication has been prepared within INDIGISE project. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the project coordinator and may not always reflect the views of the European Commission or the National Agency.
The buzz is steadily increasing about tools that measure the impact of social enterprises and standardized metrics for assessing social, economic, and environmental impact. However, there are currently no easily applicable tools for social entrepreneurs to measure their businesses in this way. SAMforSE has been specially created to cover this gap.
SAMforSE is a tool specifically developed for the needs of social entrepreneurs. It is geared toward the ecosystem and business model of social enterprises. The tool is designed to help identify your strengths and successes but also to highlight areas where there is room for improvement when it comes to sustaining success over time. The tool focuses on insights and planning rather than relying on some general strategies that your enterprise is growing or scaling in the right direction, or achieving impact by improving the lives of customers.
How to use SAMforSE?
The self-assessment manual consists of some introductory remarks, eleven questionnaires from different evaluation areas for assessing your business and organization, an overall assessment.
The evaluation areas for your self-assessment are:
Make an honest assessment of your business or organization based on the prompts in each evaluation area. Base your assessment on how each prompt applies to your business or organization: is this a “strong” area, an area that you are “tracking,” or an area that “needs improvement”?
Before starting self-assessment, remember to:
Be honest to yourself, it’s all about your own evaluation and learning;
Read the introductory notes carefully;
Consider that some evaluation areas might not be important for your current business;
Outstanding resp. weak results in several areas of the evaluation do not automatically guarantee that your organization is a success resp. a failure;
Keep in mind that the application to the personal coaching program is independent from your self-assessment results.
Are you satisfied with your results, or is there some room for improvement? If you see some areas you’d like to work on, please have a look at the “Help & Support” section or apply for a personal coaching program (our voucher-program).