Social economy organisations often face structural difficulties related to the access to new digital and green business models and their implication in the twin transition. Challenges are related to weak financial sustainability and access to finance, lack of skills and talent attraction capacity, low competitiveness on the market compared to traditional SMEs. These challenges hamper their potential to create more jobs and address societal challenges on a larger scale while inspiring systemic changes in the mainstream economy.

This project aims at strengthening the resilience and innovation capacity, competitiveness, and sustainability of social economy ecosystems and of start-ups and SMEs of the social economy, with a special focus on technology social ventures. The project will do this through providing them with support in the form of grants, vouchers and professional services. New digital and green business models enabled by new technologies are at the core of this project, as well as clusters’ support to agile forms of public-private partnerships and new forms of cooperation between private and public sectors within and across different value chains and territories, to accelerate the delivery of innovative impact solutions that would not be achieved otherwise.

This project is one of the 14 Industrial Ecosystems – linked to the EU industrial Strategy and is part of the Proximity and Social Economy Industrial Ecosystem. In September 2022, 30 Euroclusters have been launched to implement the EU Industrial Strategy. Euroclusters are cross-sectoral, interdisciplinary and trans-European strategic initiatives of industry clusters and other economic actors such as research organisations, companies, etc. Learn more and access the European Cluster Collaboration Platform here.

Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini SRL SB representing Torino Social Impact, IT

Fundatia Alaturi De Vo Romania, RO

Coompanion Örebro, SE

Silicon Vilstal gemeinnützige UG (haftungsbeschränkt), DE

Asociacion Investigacion, Desarrollo E Innovacion En Aragon, ES

European Network of Social Integration Enterprises, BE

This project SocialTech for Europe for Resilient and Responsible Ecosystems - SocialTech4EU is a EU-funded project that aims at strengthening the resilience and innovation capacity, competitiveness, and sustainability of social economy ecosystems and of start-ups and SMEs of the social economy, with a special focus on technology social ventures. In the framework of the project, a Call for Social Enterprises in Europe - Financial support for training is launched

Fill in your application here 

Find the Guidelines for Applicants here 

You can read more information here 

Are you a local, national, European, or international stakeholder interested in working in and for the social economy sector?

The SocialTech4EU project is looking for training providers, higher education institutions, research organisations, tech providers, incubators and accelerators to become part of a registry which social enterprises selected by the project will consult to support their twin transition.

Find the application form here and text of the invitation here.

You can find all information here

Work Package 1 will focus on the project management and coordination

Work Package 2 will focus on auditing and mapping. In this WP, the needs and challenges will be identified that are preventing SEs twin transitions and resilience and the social impact generated by the sector will be monitored. New collaboration models between European cluster organisations and other key actors will be built and the knowledge in the public sector and of public officials of social enterprises’ needs and characteristics is aimed to be improved, with the eye on more tailored policy design and policy making.

Work Package 3 has a focus on inspiring, up-skilling and re-skilling. The aim is to create awareness among SEs on how new technological solutions could be used to increase effectiveness and efficiency of their service and business models, as well as for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of their operating model for better inclusiveness. Moreover, up- and re-skilling will be fostered and the aim is to raise the skills and capacity of EU SE cluster managers.

Work Package 4 will connect to innovate. Promising SEs will be identified and selected, both for innovation support in WP4 and acceleration after WP4. The selected social enterprises will exchange with other parties, resulting in new-to-firm products or services in the focused ecosystem. In this WP, internationalization actions will be supported.

Work Package 5 will support the social enterprises in the uptaking and upscaling of innovation and will bring their innovative solutions to the market, will support social enterprises accessing new financing opportunities and will facilitate cooperation with international business partners (corporates, investors, procurers, etc).

Work Package 6 focusses on communication & dissemination and will ensure synergies with other Eurocluster activities.

The SocialTech4EU partners are launching a survey on Social Enterprises in the EU! 

Purpose of the survey

The survey aims to understand the needs and blockers preventing Social Enterprises (SEs) to innovate, to make the most of digital transformation, to embrace the twin digital & green transition, and to become more resilient. 
The results from the survey will inform the design of voucher and grant schemes for education, innovation, and acceleration activities for Social Enterprises across EU.

Who is conducting the survey
A consortium of 6 partners implementing the SocialTech4EU project: Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Torino Social Impact, represented by Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini (IT); ADV Romania Foundation (RO); Coompanion Örebro (SE); Silicon Vilstal gemeinnützige UG (DE); Asociacion Investigacion, Desarrollo E Innovacion En Aragon (ES); European Network of Social Integration Enterprises (BE).

Survey Period: 21 November - 28 february 2023

We appreciate how precious your time is and we would like to reward your effort:

• You will get an invitation to join a European cluster of Social Enterprises and the European Map of Social Enterprises, so you can connect with other social enterprises across Europe, as well as other stakeholders in the social economy ecosystem (e.g. training and tech providers, incubators/accelerators, Universities;)
• You will get informed when the project will launch the Calls for vouchers/grants described above.

Please answer the survey here !