L31 - Nonprofit Institutions; NGOs; Social EntrepreneurshipReturn

The growing uncertainty in today’s business environment has a significant influence on social business’s behaviour. Those enterprises could rely on public support in the past, but nowadays, they have to find a way to be more responsible about their social activity and be financially independent on public resources. Based on this theoretical background, the paper’s main goal was to find a set of factors that influence crucial financial decisions within a crisis. When social businesses create an optimal financial portfolio to be financially sustainable, primary research was conducted. A sample of 57 social businesses was asked about their financial strategy. The main research goal was to compare a change before and after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic situation in 2020. This case has shown current financial thinking and preparedness for unusual or crises. A mixed research approach was chosen due to a limited number of respondents. The overall results found that those businesses prefer to use the current strategy (42%) in crisis, and they limit investments to survive in that situation, except marketing investments (16%).
Implications for Central European audience: At the theoretical level, our study shows social enterprise concepts in the Central European context, which differs somewhat from the already established definition of mainly Anglo-Saxon and American authors. At the same time, it combines knowledge about the use of financial planning in this segment. The study results show that financial planning is essential in these companies because it can achieve social goals. A discussion would be opened on how to raise awareness of the preparation of the strategy.  Alternatively, how to strengthen the financial literacy of managers or representatives of these entities.

Creativity in the arts has been influenced by an environment where the integral parts are state provisions, which directly and indirectly support the development of the independent arts sector. The past decades have seen a change in the field of arts and the support thereof as part of creative branches. The paper focuses on new approaches of non-profit arts organizations to receive support for their activities using the principles of cultural entrepreneurship. The research was performed in the Czech Republic in the monitored period of 2008-2016. The theoretical part of the research is concluded by a proposal for a new definition of cultural entrepreneurship of non-profit cultural and arts organizations and is then implemented in the practical part. The practical part includes outputs of the author’s research in the field of crowdfunding platforms in the Czech Republic, outputs from the focus groups analysis and a selective survey. Apart from the research, there are outputs of three case studies from the field of non-profit arts, observing their economic behaviour as seen by cultural entrepreneurship. In the end, the paper presents a proposal for recommendations for the non-profit arts sector and the extent of strategic measures at the state level.