Boosting Social Enterprise Development
Good Practice Compendium
Social enterprises are long-standing agents of inclusive growth and democratisation of the economic and social spheres, and they have proved resilient to economic adversity all the while addressing socio-economic challenges in innovative ways, re-integrating people back to the labour market, and contributing to overall social cohesion. This compendium derives policy lessons for boosting social enterprises from the analysis of 20 initiatives in several EU member-countries, covering a range of policy areas from legal frameworks, finance, market access, and support structures, to education and skills.
Financing Agency for Social Entrepreneurship (FASE): An intermediary for hybrid financing, Germany
The Financing Agency for Social Entrepreneurship (FASE) is a financial intermediary providing hybrid financing to social enterprises. It uses a highly tailored, “deal-by-deal” approach in order to design innovative financing schemes that match the needs of social enterprises and impact investors. FASE objectives, rationale and key activities are presented together with the challenges faced in implementing the scheme and the impact it has achieved to date. Lessons learnt and conditions for transferring this practice to another context are also included.