The financing of the non-profit sector
‘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! 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. |
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© 2007 ULi�ge
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