Meet Yiorgos Alexopoulos, research fellow at Euricse

Social Enterprise between social impact and financial needs

Yiorgos Alexopoulos is researcher at the Agricultural University of Athens (Greece) and Senior Research Fellow at Euricse in the framework of the project “Research in Social Enterprise, its social impact and its financial needs”(RiSE GRIT). The project is awarded by a Marie Curie Action – Intra-European fellowships for Career Development (IEF), 7FP. 

Yiorgos started his fellowship at Euricse in June 2014 and he has recently submitted his first interim report. We are happy to note that the project presented in collaboration with Euricse as host organization, has been evaluated by the European Commission evaluators with the maximum score (100 out of 100!).  The project is aiming at better understanding social enterprises and their contribution to societal wellbeing, inclusion and smart economic growth with the special attention to the rich Italian experience. The desire of the researcher is to give his contribution and find the way to translate the findings into effective policies that would be able to exploit the social enterprise competitive advantages vis-à-vis public and for-profit enterprises.

Among the various successes Yiorgos has had during the first year of study and research is his nomination as a non public member in the recent renewal of private experts of the European Commission’s group of experts on social entrepreneurship (Groupe d’Experts de la Commission sur l’Entrepreneuriat Social” – GECES).

Yiorgos, could you tell us more about the main results obtained during your one-year stay in Trento?

I studied social finance theoretically and empirically by participating actively in relevant EU research networks and pilot projects, as well by the administeringr a survey to investigate the financial and funding needs of Greek social enterprises (demand side). Along the same lines, I also worked intensively to support the development of a pilot project, which has set to introduce in the Greek social finance community an alternative mechanism for the support of social economy and social entrepreneurship (supply and intermediary side). Finally, I tried to explore ways to benefit from the European academic and research culture such as introducing teaching modules that focus on SE&SEs within the curricula of Greek Universities, developing joint research projects, motivating young Greek researchers to focus on the research of SE&SEs in Greece, and linking Greek researchers to their European peers.

Which are the main themes that you approached in your work and how would you evaluate your work so far?

I have to say that I am very happy with the work done during these last 12 months at Euricse. I am rapidly improving my knowledge in the subject and at the same time, I am getting to know better existing social entrepreneurial initiatives, strengthening links and supporting initiatives to promote the self-organisation of the Greek social entrepreneurship ecosystem. I would evidence as one of the most important results the mapping of key stakeholders and proposed scheme for analysis of what constitute (or should constitute) an enabling social finance community. I tried to identify players and their roles in different EU countries in an attempt to organize analysis of social finance communities and ecosystems. I would also like to highlight in particular the two components of the ecosystem (social finance knowledge center and social finance forum) which could be considered innovative and are currently rather underdeveloped in the relevant approaches.

SOCIAL (IMPACT) FINANCE KNOWLEDGE CENTRE

A “competence centre’ (a “hub” …) for knowledge and thought leadership on social investment and venture philanthropy, collecting data and research results, connecting researchers and developing strategic interventions and recommendations related to weaknesses and deficiencies, specificities, particularities and development trends in a social finance community/eco-system. (build the evidence-base)

SOCIAL (IMPACT) FINANCE FORUM

The “place” (“Agora” – “Market” in a social meaning) where impact investors, social investment intermediaries and organisations as well as their supporters meet to share insights in financial needs of, and suitable financial instruments and tools for, SES/social ventures, and to “coordinate” their financial support more strategically with their grantees/investees to increase their social impact and to build (or further) a nurturing/enabling ecosystem for impact financing (elaborate on the evidence base built…).

In the past months Yiorgos supported the Greek pilot project on the development of an alternative financial instrument to support funding/financial needs of Greek social enterprises, a project awarded with a grant by the European Commission-DG Ent. He is also a part of an OECD-LEED Programme – Euricse team partnering to promote social enterprise development through the project “Boosting social entrepreneurship and social enterprise creation”. This project was assigned by the European Commission to assess and provide tailored advice to individual national or regional administrations of EU Member-States in the design and implementation of integrated policies and programmes for social enterprises. The project intends to make a valuable contribution to Europe’s 2020 Strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth while dovetailing with the European Commission’s Social Business Initiative for boosting social entrepreneurship.

In the framework of this joint project, Yiorgos was invited to participate in the Capacity Building Seminar “Building enabling ecosystems for social enterprises” which was held on 22-23 April 2015, in Brussels. He presented the work on “Paving the road for efficient social finance communities: Tips for turning lesson learnt into good practice” and along with his Euricse co-fellow Flaviano Zandonai drew participants’ attention to the importance of setting up enabling support structures for social enterprises at national level and providing a framework that fosters investment readiness together with a tailored access to different financial and funding sources.

What are your plans for the 2nd year of your Marie Curie Fellowship?

For the second year of the project, on top of continuing my training and work on alternative financial instruments to support the development of SE&SEs, I have set to work with SEs to analyse income and funding sources, as well as their current and future plans and challenges they face in order to access the right financial/funding sources to develop them. Moreover, my work with banks that finance social enterprises will continue in order to capitalize on their experience and mainstream good practices. An interesting dimension that will remain at the core of the research plan is the role that public/regional/local authorities should be invited to play in supporting the development of SEs, along with the adequate structuring of SEs’ business support tools and methods that will enhance investment readiness and capacity building in the community. Finally, I intend to work and develop proposals on how we could introduce into official statistical data kept on SMEs a framework that includes and corresponds to SE&SEs, as currently there is definitely shortage of available and comparable data especially with regard to access to finance.

It is probably needless to say that the Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship provides the right framework for an intensive and challenging work in this direction. This grant and of course the motivation, support and inspiration of my scientific supervisor Prof. Carlo Borzaga and Euricse co-fellow researchers, make me eager to work intensively to meet the goals set for the 2nd year of the project. And as the deadline for the submission of proposals for new Marie Curie Fellowship approaches, let me wish the best success to all candidates! Guys what it takes is a good project, a committed host institution, and …willingness to work hard to benefit from a perfect opportunity that the Marie Curie Fellowships offer! Good luck to all.