Guidance note: Skills & Business Development Support

Access to skills and business development support has been identified as a key policy lever in building a conducive ecosystem for social enterprises by the OECD and the European Commission’s Expert Group on Social Entrepreneurship (GECES). Just like traditional enterprises, social enterprises might not have all the necessary expertise and capacities in-house to operate and develop in a sustainable way. Therefore, they would benefit from training, mentoring, consulting, business development support throughout their stages of development. While support for social enterprises is increasingly offered in many places, it still needs to be further developed in order to help social enterprises to professionalize and scale their impact.

When developing capacity and business development support for social enterprises, it is important that such support is:

• Accessible: the appropriate variety of support services should be provided, in both urban and rural areas.
• Adapted: because social enterprises seek to combine financial sustainability with maximizing social impact, they require tailored support, addressing both business management skills and skills specific to the needs of social enterprises, such as innovative business modeling, social impact measurement and hybrid funding strategies.
• Affordable: social enterprises might not easily afford to pay for support services. Therefore, smart pricing mechanisms, subsidized costs and third-party financing may be required.

Dedicated support structures, such as hubs, accelerators, or incubators, which provide training opportunities, coaching, consultancy services, office space and/or networking opportunities are essential to ensure the sustainable development of social enterprises. Such structures should tailor the support offered to the specific needs and development stages of the social enterprises and seek to be well-connected with their peers as well as the larger business support ecosystem (academia and research institutes, funders, public entities, commercial partners, etc.). This will not only serve the social enterprises they support - it will also help to promote the concept of social entrepreneurship in other sectors and foster cross-sector collaboration. Public and private actors both have a crucial role to play in developing and funding such support programs.

Policy levers for skills and business development support:

• Map the existing ecosystem of support for social enterprises in order to identify unmet needs.
• Leverage public funding instruments to support the creation of targeted support structures and highquality programmes.
• Promote the sustainability of support structures and programs, and incentivise their use.
• Foster synergies and complementarities between support structures for social enterprises to avoid duplication and inefficiencies.
• Encourage cross-sector collaboration on social innovation and entrepreneurship (for example, partnerships between social enterprises and traditional enterprises).
• Design and implement strategies fostering entrepreneurship education that seek to develop students’ ability to recognise and act upon opportunities to create social value.
• Ensure that the support is of high quality and delivers the expected results, through evidence-based research and impact assessment.

Pitfalls to avoid

• Do not provide support in a way that is unbalanced in terms of geographical coverage, for example by focusing only or predominantly on urban areas.
• Avoid providing fragmented or isolated support.
• Bear in mind that short-term project-based support may not be sustainable in the long run.

Guidance per assessment statement

Why is it important?

Developing a social enterprise requires a diverse set of skills, including both “traditional” business skills (e.g. business development and management, human resources, financial management, governance, etc.) and specific skills related to setting up and running a social enterprise (e.g. social problem analysis, social impact management, measurement and reporting, and stakeholder management). It is therefore essential to provide appropriate training to help social enterprises, as well as future social entrepreneurs, build their generic and specific skills and competencies. Training can be provided online or offline, on an individual or collective basis, and through a series of modules or an intensive training period (e.g. a week-long boot camp). Public bodies should consider how to promote and (co-)finance appropriate training initiatives in their territories.

In order to score high, in your context:

• Dedicated training is available about key issues, such as business skills, social impact measurement, management and social skills.
• The training is tailored to the stage of development and maturity of the social enterprises.

Why is it important?

Access to tailored coaching and mentoring programmes can help social enterprises in many ways: it can build their internal capacity and skills, make them benefit from an external perspective on their personal and enterprise development, and allow them to access new networks and contacts. Coaches or mentors can be experienced social enterprise leaders, professionals from the commercial sector or subject-matter experts. Often what is needed is someone asking the right challenging questions, just as much as someone to provide answers. Such programmes can take various forms: online or offline, one-to-one or group sessions, short-term or longer-term support. While group sessions allow for peer learning and sharing of experiences, one-to-one programmes, albeit often more resource-intensive, can provide more personalised and in-depth support.

In order to score high, in your context:

• Coaching and mentoring programmes are affordable.
• Coaches and mentors receive training in providing support to social entrepreneurs.
• There is a matching mechanism to ensure that there is a “good fit” between the social entrepreneur and their coach and/or mentor.

Why is it important?

Dedicated support structures usually provide a range of services to help establish or scale-up social enterprises, such as co-working spaces, training, coaching, consulting services, networking and funding. These services are often combined with specific programmes offered to social enterprises. Most support structures focus on young social enterprises (‘start-up-ers’), while fewer target social enterprises seeking to grow their organization and/or their impact (‘scalers’). Dedicated support structures should ideally establish strong links with other stakeholders, such as private companies and public bodies, as a means not only to help social enterprises scale their impact, but also to enable multistakeholder collaboration. It is also important that the existence of dedicated support structures is adequately communicated through various channels in order for the social entrepreneurs (existing and aspiring) to find them.

In order to score high, in your context:

• General business development support structures provide integrated support to social enterprises.
• Dedicated incubators and hubs are available to help social enterprises to be established and grow.
• Dedicated incubators and hubs are promoted through various channels.
• The scale of support meets the demand of social enterprises.

Developing a successful social enterprise is not an easy task. Networks for social enterprises can therefore fulfill various functions leading to increased sustainability of social enterprises. They can facilitate the sharing of experiences and learnings among peers, forge synergies and new opportunities for collaborations, mutualise or share resources, improve visibility and advocacy efforts, promote access new markets, and influence policy- making.

In order to score high, in your context:

• There are initiatives that support the creation and development of networks.
• Networks help social enterprises to connect with peers and develop transnationally, including through online platforms and face-to-face events.
• Networks stimulate knowledge sharing.