The Digital Cluster of Catalonia takes a step forward in supporting the social economy and SMEs in the third sector with its participation in the European project DO Impact (Digital and Data-driven Opportunities to Strengthen the Social Economy Impact).

The project, financed by the COSME program of the European Union, has the main objective of helping local SMEs and third sector and social economy organizations to adopt digital solutions and data-based management models. During the next 24 months, the Digital Cluster of Catalonia, together with 8 other European partners, will work to help these entities to transform digitally, thus improving their operational efficiency and the services they offer.

The project's launch meeting, which took place on 30 September and 1 October 2024 in Turin, marks the start of an initiative that aims to leverage digitization and data-driven models to strengthen impact social in Europe. It was the first face-to-face meeting of the organizations participating in the project, coming from several European countries:

- Fondazione Piemonte Innova (Italy)

- Diesis Network (Belgium)

- Torino Social Impact (Italy)

- Table of entities of the Third Social Sector of Catalonia (Spain)

- Latvijas Sociālās entrepreneurship Association (Latvia)

- Lithuanian Social Business Association (Lithuania)

- TIRESIA – Politecnico di Milano (Italy)

- Coompanion Gothenburg (Sweden)

- Digital Cluster of Catalonia (Spain)

This broad consortium will work together to develop and implement digital tools that allow organizations to better adapt to new economic and social challenges, thus improving their sustainability, competitiveness and social value.

The challenges and opportunities of digitization in the social economy

During the two days of the meeting, the participants discussed the current needs of companies in the social sector in relation to digitization. The debates focused on the need to train entities in key areas such as data science, process innovation and the development of new social business models, as well as understanding digitization as a unique opportunity to improve their its operational efficiency. However, it was recognized that many of the current technological solutions do not fit the specific needs of the entities and that, therefore, one of the challenges of the DO Impact project will be to adapt these digital solutions to the reality of the third sector and the social economy.

Next steps

The meeting at the beginning of the project was also an opportunity to establish the road map of the next activities and start to outline strategies to activate the local ecosystems.

They also discussed the communication and dissemination strategies necessary to guarantee the success of the initiative and to spread the results.

In the coming months, the 9 partners that are part of the project consortium will work to define and implement the solutions that will help SMEs in the social sector not only to transform digitally, but to a more inclusive, sustainable and efficient transition with a strong social impact in Europe.