Full project name: „Sustaining civil society impact through social entrepreneurship and innovations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Turkey“
Duration: 40 months, starting from December 2015
About
Smart Start is project co-financed by the European Union, through the Civil Society Facility and Media Programme 2014-2015, Support to regional thematic networks of Civil Society Organizations. The project is led by Centre for Civil Society Promotion (CSSP), and the project partners are Centre for Research and Policy Making (Macedonia), Institute for Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (Montenegro), Centre for Development of Non-Profit Sector (Serbia) and YADA Foundation (Turkey) with support by CEDRA HR (Croatia).
The project aims to strengthen CSOs advocacy and networking capacities, improve internal governance structures, diversify funding base through establishment of social entrepreneurship and elaboration of strategic long-term organisational plan. These results are expected to enable a generation of new and more professional CSOs more dedicated to their mission, citizens and society at large as well as partnership of CSOs and the business sector in all 5 countries, bringing mutual benefits to all parties.
Overall objective:
Objective of this project is to help create an enabling environment for social entrepreneurship of civil society organizations (CSOs) and to improve their sustainability, financial viability and social impact in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey.
Specific objectives are:
1. To strengthen long-term financial sustainability and impact of 50 selected CSOs in the five partner countries through start-up financial support and socially and environmentally responsible use of self-financing strategies, social innovations and social enterprise;
2. To improve the social enterprise-friendly environment through networking of CSOs and other stakeholders, and conducting five national advocacy campaigns;
3. To promote CSO social entrepreneurship and to encourage replication throughout the civil society sector in the region by the sharing of information, lessons learned and by promotion of good practices in CSO self-financing and social enterprise.
Target group(s) involve 100 civil society organizations, local governments in 5 countries and 50 companies.
Final beneficiaries comprise 5.000+ members of targeted CSOs, 50.000 CSOs in five countries, marginalized and vulnerable citizens.
