Increased organisational excellence can improve the resilience of SMEs in the social economy in terms of:

• economic, social or environmental impact and performance,
• access to markets (public and private),
• innovation capacity: place based, social, digital and ecological,
• market positioning and (cross-)sectoral orientation,
• research and development strategies,
• product and service development as well as new business models,
• value chains assessment,
• foresight and anticipatory capacity,
• strategies to strengthening skills, focussing on several profiles in the organisation (management, employees, volunteers, target groups, etc.).

This topic will offer the opportunity to design support services/capacity building programmes improving organisational excellence of SMEs in the social economy (e.g. organisational performance assessment, support offer, monitoring and benchmarking). The long-term aim is to allow scaling up of these programmes developed by the supported projects to benefit more Social Economy SMEs.

Under this topic projects must consider all the following aspects when identifying the targeted SMEs in the social economy to be supported:

• Sectoral activity (e.g. recycling, social services, retail, tourism, agri-food, health and care services, manufacturing, etc.).
• Type of SMEs in social economy (e.g. social enterprises, different type of cooperatives, non-profit associations, Work Integration Social Enterprises, foundations and philanthropic organisations, social service providers, etc.).
• Territorial dimension (e.g. SMEs in the social economy in a particular country, region(s), city/ies and social economy cluster(s) or similar territorial partnerships with social economy actors involved.
• Degree of maturity in terms of organisational excellence of the targeted SMEs in the social economy.

Priorities envisaged by proposals submitted under this topic will focus on:

Using, adapting or developing a model to assess and measure the organisational performance of SMEs in the social economy and apply this to those SMEs identified within the project scope.

Based on the findings, remediation in terms of quality of management and organisational excellence of SMEs in the social economy through dedicated capacity building, training, coaching and advisory services. The implementation of the schemes should undergo a piloting phase for its further implementation (including benchmarking) allowing adaptation before further upscaling.

• Promoting transferability: blueprints for replication need to be developed, based on the experience of the developed programmes for capacity building, training, coaching and advisory, which are tested in multiple contexts and ready to be used beyond the project.
• Transnational learning: projects should have a clear cross-border learning effect and should develop support services with a transferable character (adaptable to the local context) or transnational learning component (e.g. peer learning). Therefore, projects should address the needs of target groups (SMEs and social economy support organisations) with different degrees of maturity, allowing learning effects within the consortia.

The support by the capacity building schemes can be provided through capacity building, training, coaching and advisory, accompanied with networking, matchmaking & facilitation, research and innovation support and/or product and service development and go to market services.

Although projects are free to focus on specific themes, add themes and specific modules, the following non-exhaustive themes could be included in the capacity building, training, coaching and advisory offer towards SMEs in the social economy:

• Governance of the Organisation
  Purpose: Governance of the organization is conducted in a quality manner.
• Strategy of the organisation
  Purpose: The organization defines or updates its strategy, including anticipatory elements.
• General management of the organisation
  Purpose: The management of the organization is done in a transparent way with as much as possible participatory / democratic decision-making.
• Human Resource Management
  Purpose: Human resource management runs in an efficient and effective manner and focuses on the personal development of employees and competence enhancement of the staff.
• Financial management of the organisation
  Purpose: The financial management of the organisation is aligned with the core mission of the company and to the long-term strategy of the organisation. The resources are managed properly and transparently.
• Change management
  Purpose: Companies are ready to properly implement changes within their organisation.
• Stakeholder management
  Purpose: Knowledge sharing between stakeholders is increased.
• Marketing & public relations (PR)
  Purpose: products and services are attractively promoted and placed in physical and online markets.
• Local embedding
  Purpose: The organisation engages with the local community and works towards sustainable local anchoring and development.