Social entrepreneurship as a solution provider for ageing societies in Europe

• Author(s): Knott, Carola
• Date: 2014
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/11783
• Origin: Repositório Institucional da UNL
• Subject(s): Social entrepreneurship; Impact investing; Ageing population; ubjective well-being
• Document Type: Master thesis
• Language: English
• Advisor(s): Martins, Miguel Alves
• Contributor(s): RUN

Description

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

This work was conducted during an internship with the Social Venture Fund (SVF) in Munich which is the first social impact investing institution that strategically targets social enterprises with innovative driven solutions that tackle urgent societal and/or environmental challenges across Europe (SVF, 2013). The SVF addresses the funding gap often faced by social enterprises and aims to assure rate of returns with percentages similar to bank deposits but invests in social entrepreneurial solutions with the objective of maximizing social impact. It commonly provides debt and mezzanine capital as well as equity investments through preferred shares. The SVF 1 with a volume of 7.3 million Euros is currently invested in five social enterprises named ‘Auticon’1, ‘Deutschland rundet auf’2, ‘Essex Social Impact Bond’3, ‘Kinderzentren Kunterbunt’4 and ‘VerbaVoice’5 (SVF, 2013). Thus SVF 1 attracts investors who are mainly driven by impact generation (Santos, 2012). With regard to SVF 2 (First closing 09/12/13: 16.4m €) the team is highly interested in discovering social challenges, innovative ideas and social enterprises across Europe as potential future fund’s investments. Therefore it is important to investigate social issues/ sectors that could be of interest. The present work intends to understand and demonstrate the process of identifying a field of investment according to problem size, attractiveness, maturity, existence of established solutions and identification of investment opportunities. The research aims to investigate whether a sector could be of interest for impact investing institutions who are willing to (financially) support the scaling-up or replication of social enterprises and which entrepreneurial solutions already exist in terms of quality and quantity. The focus is on the case of population ageing in Europe and its consequences which represent growing problems for society and hence provide space for social entrepreneurship (SE). Accordingly existing and emerging opportunities for impact investors in the field of elderly will be demonstrated.