Last April took place the Second Annual Conference of ESELA at the KU Leuven campus in Brussels, Belgium. This year, focusing on how non-profits and businesses could team up to maximize their social impact, displayed diverse and creative ways for social entrepreneurs to reach their goal—through alternative funding for instance.
For more than a decade now, stakeholders have been trying to optimize their social impact—even before we knew there were social entrepreneurs, impact investing and so... It was clear that new technologies will be an essential tool for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
The other matchless tool for empowering social stakeholders is the law. This last component should never be disregarded as it can allow significant leaps for social impacts but also limit them when stakeholders stop pushing for the law to change.
What was also seen is that due to a History of Welfare State, countries in Europe such as Belgium or France still have difficulty considering private persons being able to carry the roles of stakeholders in defying new social challenges.