Funding Social Innovation: exploring the funding ecosystem in Europe 0 Reply

SIX organised a session on social finance as part of the Social Innovation Europe Initiative. The main purpose of the session was to get practical input and thoughts on the current state and current developments in the funding systems in place to support social innovations in Europe. These thoughts and insights will now be woven into the Social Innovation Europe initiative’s report on the topic for the European Commission. It has been shown over the last decades that there is a lot of excitement and energy surrounding social innovations across Europe but no sustainable market for social investments. Apart from traditional grant funding infrastructure, there is little appropriate support for social innovations and our focus must turn to new financial instruments.

As part of the session, participants discussed the following questions:

What type of funding has promoted the most socially innovative activities?

How can the European Commission encourage and support social innovation activities? What kinds of finance would better support social innovation?

What role should the private sector play? What would be the role of different tools offered by that sector – for instance through capital markets or through banking finance? How might private investors be empowered to drive positive change? What can be done on a European level?

Can foundations play a greater role in funding and financing social innovation? How could this be further enhanced by European Commission support

Where do we want to be in 10 years time? What do we want the finance infrastructure look like?

For more information about social innovation exchange and the Social Innovation Europe initiative see www.socialinnovationexchange.org. For more information on Dialogue Cafe contact jude@dialoguecafe.org