‘The non-market economy is also the economy!’ proclaim Sybille Mertens and Michel Marée of the University of Liège’s Centre for Social Economy, which has just studied how non-profit organisations are financed. Practically never by bank loans or credit... And it is not because the banks refuse to offer such funds!

‘I recently heard a politician say, in a special programme on Wallonia’s economic future, that what is needed in Wallonia is the creation of jobs, but ‘real’ jobs. Not subsidised jobs. I found that pretty shocking.’ Sybille Mertens, an Associate Professor at the University of Liège’s HEC-Management School, and her colleague Michel Marée, Research Professor at the Centre for Social Economy, have been faced with such received ideas for years now. Poorly understood, little considered, ‘lagging behind’, the sector of ‘not-for-profit organisations’ – whose job growth is 2.5 times higher than that of the rest of the economy – is still for many people an isolated phenomenon, completely detached from the economy. The ‘real’ one, that is. The blame in particular lies in a triptych which has become lodged in people’s minds: ‘economy = market = mercantile.’ Absent from this triad, the non-market sector in Belgium, represented by 17,000 non-profit organisations (outside of the public sector), nonetheless employs 564,497 people. Or 16% of salaried employment in Belgium (‘8%, if we take out the subsidized private hospitals and schools, the sector’s two major employers,’ adds Sybille Mertens); and its added value represents 7.2% of GDP. Despite this reality numerous commonplaces circulate on the subject of the non-profit sector, in almost every type of environment: economic, political, university, journalistic and…the non-profit world. ‘Even the actors on the ground, members of the associations themselves, slip into certain clichés,’ continues Michel Marée. ‘Many are convinced that they are not in the economy. Yet, meeting basic needs by using resources, and creating employment, be it subsidised or not, is precisely being part of the economy.’

Nevertheless a sharp rise in the interest shown in the non-profit sector has been felt recently – notably in the academic and banking worlds. At the ULg, the work carried out at the Centre for Social Economy, created and directed by Professor Jacques Defourny, has over the years drawn light to this subject of study which to all appearances is not particularly attractive. It is now two decades that the Unit’s researchers – around a dozen in number today – have been taking an interest in the non-profit sector. ‘At the beginning we weren’t really taken seriously. Our research made a few of our colleagues smile,’ says one of the researchers. Water – a lot of it – has flowed under the bridge since. Little by little the Centre has carved out a place in the sun for itself. Thanks especially to the important work it has carried out: the design of the first satellite account for not-for-profit organisations – a project which has inspired similar initiatives in numerous other countries; more recently the setting up, at the HEC-ULg, of a Masters in Management, with a specialism in the management of social enterprises; and, this year, a project – ‘If not for profit, for what? And how?’ – funded in the framework of the ‘PAI’ programme (interuniversity attraction poles) and which figures amongst the five projects to be approved by the ULg. The Centre’s current renown is far from being a question of luck, and its work is far from being minor. A platform such as ConcertES – a consultancy body for representative organisations of the social economy in the Walloon Region and Brussels – manages an ‘observatory’ which would never for example have come into being without the steps forward carried out at the Centre in terms of statistical data.