∷ Beijing Yifang Foundation → Social enterprise [Research] → 2016
• Research on Social Enterprise Certification in China
Partner Organization: Peking University’s Centre for Civil Society Studies
Project Duration: Jul 2016 – Dec 2020
Project Status: Going on
The concept of social enterprises originated from Europe during the 1990s. By using commercial methods to solve social problems, social enterprises have since challenged the definition of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and blurred the lines between private interest and public welfare. The positive effects of social enterprises make it the most influential social innovation movement in the 21st Century. It is for this reason that China needs to study how social enterprises can help the vulnerable social groups that are marginalized by the free market. Implementing a certification system is an important means to achieve accelerated and systematic development of the sector. This is why the Beijing Yifang Foundation decided to collaborate with the Peking University’s Centre for Civil Society Studies for this research project. It aimed to draw on international experiences with social enterprise certification and apply the learning points to China. With the results of the study, the team prepared a set of social enterprise certification unique to China’s needs with the hope of promoting this concept and legalizing it as soon as possible.