The main aim of this collection is to guarantee the comparability, accessibility and further exploitation of those inspiring social entrepreneurial practices that might assist policymakers across the Danube region in re-designing social entrepreneurial policies, financial instruments and co-operations. In order to identify the most important success criteria for sustainable social enterprises we collected several best practice examples. The criteria for these are, that the exemplary SEs are: well established and are operating at least for the past three years with a well-defined and tracked social impact.
The best practice descriptions covered: the characteristics of the social enterprises, their social aims and problems, success factors and plans for the future and on the scalability of their project.
The research showed, that the main success factors are: performance, price and social impact. Also the SEs need to deal with external challenges and day-to day management to establish sustainable social enterprises.
The exemplary SEs deal with challenges as shaping customer awareness of social challenges, appropriate regulations on social entrepreneurship, access to infrastructure and to social enterprise accelerators. Therefore they need efficient management, organizational structures supporting financially sustainable operation and skilled and committed employees
