30.05.2017

The President supported the idea of creating such a fund.

In the near future, a Federal Fund for the Support of Social Enterprise will be established, the general director of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, Svetlana Chupsheva, told TASS. “We came forward with a proposal for its creation and the President supported the idea. The concept will soon be agreed with experts and development institutions which in one way or another work on this topic, and it will then be presented,” the information agency quoted her as saying.

According to Chupsheva, the Fund will share best practice and educational programmes, create acceleration programme models, and prepare tutors who will bring projects to the stage of attracting investments. Moreover, the Fund, in cooperation with the development institutes, will help attract finance as well as guarantee venture capital for start-ups in the social sphere.

Chupsheva highlighted that the leaders in the development of social enterprise are the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous district – Yugra, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Perm region, Murmansk and Ulyanovsk oblasts, Saint Petersburg and a series of other regions. These regions have already become donors of best practice by creating essential infrastructure and by allowing the non-governmental sector access to the social sphere through various state contracts, certificates and compensatory measures for services provided, she said.

In 2016, she suggested to the President that a tool should be created which would help Russian companies finance social projects and engage citizens in economic activity. In the Agency for Strategic Initiatives for Social Enterprises’ pilot accelerator, 50 projects from the world of education, health care, social services, culture and sport took part.

In May 2017, an award ceremony took place in Moscow for the winners of the prize “Impulse of goodness”, set up by the foundation “Our future”. The prize is awarded for contributions to the development and promotion of social enterprise in Russia. The most active entrepreneurs were from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, the Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous district – Yugra, the Moscow oblast, Perm region and the Republic of Bashkortostan.

Source: https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2017/05/30/noviy-fond-podderzhki-socpredprinimateley/