On Thursday 5 February, the study by Talento para el Futuro, ‘Generación Impacto II: employment, entrepreneurship and participation in the social economy in Spain‘, was presented in Madrid.
The study captures the results of a survey directed at young people, based on a total sample of 1,001 individuals, as well as a qualitative questionnaire addressed to representative organisations within the ecosystem — including the public sector, financiers (in which SpainNAB also participated) and training actors.
The overall conclusion of the perceptions study is that young people’s interest in the social economy and impact entrepreneurship is not the problem: the study shows interest and alignment with purpose, but young people reserve their space for participation in the social economy for voluntary activities. This study tells us that young people are not asking for epic narratives: they are asking for conditions. However, it is worth highlighting a bias detected — the conflation of the social economy with the third sector or NGOs — which reflects, once again (as was already noted in the first edition of this study), a certain lack of awareness about what the social economy actually is. This also leads one to treat conclusions about the existence of greater risk (in terms of salary precarity, career trajectory, etc.) with caution, since, as was made clear at the roundtable, this is not necessarily the operational reality of social economy entities as a whole.
Nevertheless, as a perception it is valid and provides a starting point from which to work: greater awareness of the existence and functioning of the sector — and the different legal forms it encompasses — is a challenge identified particularly in some territories with less tradition and fewer reference points in the social economy.
What is interesting here is the need for the social economy sector to be able to assert itself as a professional option without requiring a narrative of ‘individual commitment’ — something that calls for reflection on collective responsibility: from within the social economy itself, but also from other structures that must recognise its social value, support it and provide it with resources.
In this respect, from the perspective that links the debate to financing, the common ground in impact can be a major opportunity to provide security, scale and trajectory to social economy projects through impact financing — and to translate that into greater visibility and sustainability for the model.
An economy of ‘nuance’
In the roundtable, moderated by Mireya Diouri and comprising Sara Simón (Asett), César Valdeviera (Youth Business Spain–YBS) and María Molina (SpainNAB), two languages and approaches came together that share points of connection. At times, after revisiting concepts such as social economy, impact economy and the social sector, the conversation led us to speak of ‘nuance’. These nuances are nonetheless relevant and, in the effort to build complementary links while also highlighting the need to make different options and models more visible, they deserve to be underlined.
On the one hand, the social economy is regulated and encompasses different legal forms (associations, foundations, work integration enterprises, mutual societies, worker-owned companies and special employment centres, among others). The impact economy, by contrast, is a concept ‘under construction’, but one around which actors such as SpainNAB have already been generating a degree of consensus — a concept that encompasses all legal forms of the social economy, but also social enterprises with commercial legal forms such as Limited Companies (SL) or Benefit and Interest Companies (SBIC).
As regards the social value of the social economy, there is no doubt: these are entities whose principles (primacy of people and social purpose, democratic and participatory management, solidarity and equality, reinvestment of profits, independence from public authorities and commitment to the environment) — determinants of the governance and sovereignty over the management of their activity — are aligned with a fairer economic model. However, the social economy relates to how entities are organised; from an impact perspective, the focus is on the activity they carry out and on whether that activity responds to or contributes to a solution to a social or environmental challenge — it is not determined by legal form. One might therefore say that impact and legal form are not the same thing.
Legal form, in other words, does not make impact; however, a significant proportion of social economy entities, in addition to the social value they generate by virtue of their organisational and governance nature, carry out activities aligned with impact across its three characteristic axes: intentionality, additionality and impact measurement and management.
The social economy and the impact economy are not opposed, competitive or mutually exclusive — quite the contrary: the fact that impact objectives can be aligned with any legal form makes it possible to attract actors of all kinds and enrich, through diversity, the possibilities for entrepreneurship, professional careers and investment in contribution to a society that is fairer to people and the planet.
The need for accompaniment
Beyond the perceptions reflected in the study, the necessary common ground calls — as stated above — for a shared reflection that accompanies the life and organisational decisions of young people, and not so young, when it comes to entrepreneurship or choosing their professional future.
From YBS, they confirm the need for accompaniment that they encounter among those who approach them in their day-to-day work, also providing tools to give meaning to the legal form best suited to the purpose — and finding in the social economy and collective entrepreneurship options that better materialise the purpose and impact that projects are seeking.
Also from SpainNAB, we assert that impact capital is often constituted or materialised as technical assistance — where, once again, the point of convergence is the provision of resources for the economic sustainability of impact models and solutions.
At SpainNAB, we believe that impact financing, well designed, can be the bridge between the purpose that inspires and the viability that allows people to remain and develop — including within the social economy.
