The results of the policy screening and the mapping of skills gaps of social enterprises help to develop new strategies and guidelines for SEs and also help the development of training tools for social enterprises. Based on the surveys filled in by the SEs these are the following recommendations for new or better strategies:
- Stronger engagement and involvement of (national) policy improve the general conditions of social enterprises and clarify legal frameworks, national strategies and definitions. These policies should build on the expertise of social enterprises. About 60% of the surveyed social enterprises would like the have stronger possibilities to participate in designing social enterprise policies.
- Enhancement of the efforts in awareness raising for a better recognition of the SE sector, supported by the development of impact measurements tools, certification schemes, registries and research on social enterprises is needed.
- Forming a lobby for SE, involving not only enabling institutions, but also social entrepreneurs themselves to officially present the interests of the sector and to foster national and international business relations. Social enterprises are most interested in joining cooperation with other social enterprises (37%), followed by interest groups of entrepreneurs (33%) and intermediary organisations promoting the SE sector (31%).
- Improving access to market of social enterprises by making their products more competitive, forcing business relations to other companies and establishing bounds and contracts with regional and local authorities in the field of social services
- Development of more and fitting funding possibilities for social enterprises on public and private level. At the moment public funds are applied by more than half of the social enterprises surveyed, and 45% would like to apply public funds in the future. This makes them the most important financial resource for social enterprises. Moreover social enterprises are especially interested in crowdfunding and social banking.
- Further training offers for social enterprises to support the development of business skills and management knowledge. Referring to the training strategies formulated above, trainings empowering social enterprises in their special competences needed to develop social innovations and demonstrating their social impact would be appreciated most by social enterprises.
SEs should profit by the implementation of these recommendations and have the opportunity to gain improvement in these topics.
