Social finance in Europe: The transition from grants to follow-up financing for social enterprises

A large number of social enterprises (SEs) use grants as early-stage financing to establish their ventures. However, we know little about the requirements for SEs to receive grants and their follow-up financing opportunities. Based on an interview study with 13 European SEs, we show that SEs need to go through a resource-intensive application process to be able to receive a grant. To finally receive a grant, we find that nonfinancial aspects (e.g., involved people’s passion) and financial sustainability are the most important factors for convincing possible grant providers to finance an SE’s venture. Furthermore, based on signaling theory, we demonstrate that obtaining a grant increases the likelihood of finding follow-up investors. We suggest that further quantitative research should test our conceptual model, which is built on four propositions we formulate

Measuring to Improve Versus Measuring to Prove: Understanding the Adoption of Social Performance Measurement Practices in Nascent Social Enterprises

Social enterprises are described as organizations with dual objectives—social and commercial. While the measurement of commercial performance is relatively straightforward and well understood, our understanding of the factors related to measuring social performance is more ambiguous. Is the adoption of social performance measurement (SPM) practices more related to external pressures, such as the need to demonstrate legitimacy to funders and peers, or is it more closely related to the growing rationalization within the social sector? We examine the relationship between external and internal factors and the adoption of SPM using a novel dataset of 1864 nascent social enterprises from around the world. Our findings suggest support for the argument that the adoption of SPM in social enterprise is related to the growing rationalization of the social sector, which challenges some of the past research on this topic, and provides a more nuanced perspective of SPM in social enterprise