Meet the Partners | Reach for Change

What are your insights from working with social entrepreneurs from different countries and even continents? Are there any common points between them? 

I was surprised at the amount of similarities between the markets when I first worked at Reach for Change. In the Balkans we do have a mindset that the western civilizations, the Nordic civilizations are years ahead of us. But many of the challenges that social entrepreneurs meet in the Balkans are quite similar to those in Sweden, Norway, or Denmark. It's always a couple of major things: visibility, access to finance, legislation frameworks. During the last couple of years, one thing that's really standing out across the board is the need for a community around social entrepreneurs. 

What are the similarities in terms of strengths, when you think about social entrepreneurs? What sets them apart from others?

What I would definitely highlight is their passion and determination, their focus on bringing their vision to life. This is something that's making them more resilient to any challenges that come about. Another thing is a more flexible organizational setup, that makes them open to a larger pool of possible financing mechanisms, which is a strength, definitely. Also social enterprises are much more leaning towards collaborating with one another. It is easier for them to amplify each other's impact and business models. And another thing is their focus on the needs of their users. Unlike the “traditional” entrepreneurs, they build this focus early, as they are keen to solve a specific problem for a specific group. This mitigates a lot of issues down the line, but also is the closest step we can get to understanding the market opportunities.

What does Reach for Change understand as a social entrepreneur?

There are different definitions in different projects in different ecosystems, but 2 elements always stand out. The first element is a business, something that is creating profit and that can be financially sustainable over time.

The second element is impact. We need to have a very logical and sound way of how we are creating a change for the better, for the communities where we live in, or for the environments where we live in and act in. 

These two things always stand out, and it is our broad definition that everybody is using. 

How is actually Read for Change addressing the needs of social entrepreneurs? 

We've been working for 14 years in so many different markets. The way we work with social entrepreneurship in general is through 2 very distinct impact models. The first one is capacity development of social entrepreneurs through a range of support programs. This range goes from opening the possibilities in the mindset of potential entrepreneurs, to transitioning early stage ideas to tangible business models and then, in later stages, adjusting these business models to growth and scale.

Our programs can offer both financial and non-financial support. If we offer financial support, it's always intertwined with the capacity development as well. So that's always a must. For the non financial part, there's a range of mechanisms we employ, starting from coaching to mentoring, to us taking entrepreneurs through a very systematic planning processes, to following up on this planning, diagnosing, and then identifying the support needs, adapting these, with ad hoc counseling sessions and different types of trainings.

Aside from the capacity development, support, there are also ecosystem development efforts we put into place. We've noticed that sometimes entrepreneurs get very, very invested in our capacity development programs, and they kind of refuse to leave. They feel they're gonna be very vulnerable, very exposed, and very alone once they do. And this is where we recognized the need to also work with their ecosystem so that even outside of our program, they still have a nurturing environment for themselves and for their businesses. Throughout different markets, we've employed a variety of strategies to influence the ecosystem and its major stakeholders. From conferences which highlight the biggest challenges for the social entrepreneurs, to building crucial umbrella organizations for ensuring continuous support, we rely on the insights the social entrepreneurs and our local teams provide to ensure our initiatives bring the highest value possible.

Do you have any insights into how we can support social entrepreneurs to be corporate trade ready? 

I think that now the majority of social enterprises are willing to consider social procurement. There is a massive advantage for social enterprises as social procurement can actually help with their challenges. It can really expose them to new opportunities without them having to invest all of their time to become visible. And if they manage to sign contracts, they will have a steady income stream. 

There are still many entrepreneurs across the EU who are not mature enough to go into this process right now. However, with the training and other types of support provided by the members of Buy Social Europe B2B consortium, a lot of them can get ready for this. I also believe that mentorship programs are hugely important when it comes to social procurement, especially when very distinct challenges come into place. For example, transport to other countries, logistical details of this transportation or other very specific questions, this is something where mentorship can be hugely beneficial. 

Is social procurement a good option for all social entrepreneurs? Should all social entrepreneurs necessarily have B2B models? How does a social entrepreneur understand that it needs to be developed?

I think this is just the same as any other revenue stream, and it's always worthwhile considering whether this mechanism is the right one to grow or scale your organization. One thing to be mindful of is that the corporate sector works a lot differently than the social enterprise sector. 

If the social enterprise wants to become part of the supply chain of the mainstream enterprise, they're gonna have to embrace some of the hardcore elements. They have to check whether they can guarantee the same quality over and over again. And if they can’t meet all of the demands of mainstream enterprises, then it's better to hold off. 

At the beginning of the training we do have self assessment tools that can help social enterprises to check whether they are ready for social procurement, whether this is the right mechanism for them to grow and scale, or whether it's something that they can put on the sidelines for now and maybe revisit the idea a couple of years from now. 

How to encourage more mainstream enterprises to buy social? Do you have any tips there? 

One of the biggest things we can do is to showcase the benefits. Another thing is to show good practice examples, and this is why the consortium is building numerous case studies and making them available to the public. If there's a social entrepreneur and a mainstream entrepreneur who start to collaborate and they have an amazing experience, they will definitely motivate other people in their networks. 

Why did Reach for Change decide to join BuySocialEurope B2B? Why do we think social procurement is an important topic?

As I have already mentioned, this topic actually goes hand in hand with some of the biggest challenges that the social entrepreneurs are facing. If it makes sense for our target group, it makes sense for us.

We are leading 2 work packages. Both of them are very close to our mission because one of them is focused on spreading the word as widely as possible and as targeted as possible. The second work package that we are leading is around building the capacities of social entrepreneurs, and there are 2 distinct activities here.

One of them is designing and employing the training for social entrepreneurs so that they get access to the knowledge to be involved with social procurement. And then following up on this is mentoring and coaching programs designed and facilitated by our German partners from SEND. 

The training is designed in a way that is very understandable to most social entrepreneurs.

One bit of advice to social entrepreneurs that are considering a procurement journey?

The best piece of advice from my end is to be brutally honest with yourself. Going to business with mainstream enterprises could mean that you have to look at business differently at one point, that you have to take another perspective. And this might mean some compromises to some social entrepreneurs. So be very raw and open about whether you're ready for this, whether your capacities, resources, and the flow will be manageable for you, both in a sense of keeping your business afloat, but also in a sense of being kind to yourself. You don't want to burn yourself out, risk reputational of financial downfall for a single contract.

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