Page 27 - Sustainability and entrepreneurship for CSO's and CSO networks Cambodia 1 November 2018

Social enterprises
A social entrepreneurship includes:
• ambition of achieving specific social and commercial objectives
• focus on fulfilling the needs of their primary (paying) clients
• clarity about whom to target and what to offer
• a sustainable business model, in which earned income is the main funding
source
willingness to act and take risks
Levels of social entrepreneurship
Dees and Alter developed a tool to assess the nature of an organisation or business and to choose the organisation or business they want to become and defined the
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Case - The Moldavian Blind Union
Before change of the communistic regime in the former USSR, disabled people played a productive role in society. At that time blind unions were powerful, well controlled institutions that possessed numerous premises and enterprises and enjoyed full support from the government. Profits were invested in housing, healthcare, sports, cultural facilities and other services that made life of the blind comfortable.After the change of regime in 1992, out of the 4,000 blind people employed by the Moldavian Blind Union, less than 250 still found a job at the remaining MBU factories in 2015.With donor funding and loans the Moldavian Blind Union started a laundry service, furniture production, a wood workshop and a second hand shop.A new CSO, the Invise Business Start-up Centre and a second a hand shop, Nou din Nou were established in 2011. Second hand goods, such as furniture, computers, TV sets, toys, magnetron ovens were shipped from the Netherlands and sold in a shop for which a new Ltd was created. The second-hand shop has become a great success and now provides income to the Ltd, and to the Business Start-up Centre. Today six visually impaired have a job at the shop and many have been assisted in starting their own business.
spectrum; the traditional non-profit organisation is at one section, while the commercial organisation is at the opposite. Organisations in the middle balance mission and money and are seen as social enterprises.
Dahles&Kieng (2014) made a graph on Non Profits and Profits with social enterprise as a hybrid organisation:
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