We are in City Deal
More and more entrepreneurs make a positive social or ecological contribution with their work. We call these entrepreneurs 'impact entrepreneurs'. For example, they are committed to opportunities for people with disabilities, waste reduction or poverty reduction in neighborhoods. In practice, however, these entrepreneurs encounter various barriers. For example, they often experience the laws and regulations of the government as complicated.
The City Deal Impact Entrepreneurship aims to reduce these obstacles and thus promote impact entrepreneurship. The City Deal does this by supporting entrepreneurs in several ways. For example, the partners in the City Deal are building a network with other entrepreneurs and policymakers, research is being conducted and knowledge is shared, and the City Deal offers support in professionalizing the company. We are also working on a better policy for entrepreneurs.
The moment and place of the launch are not accidental. Project leader Willemien Vreugdenhil of the City Deal:
“In the City Deal Impact Entrepreneurship, we focus together with municipalities, provinces, the national government and impact entrepreneurs on realizing a sustainable and inclusive economy of meaning. An economy that gives substance to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, the SDGs.”
The City Deal focuses on strengthening the impact ecosystem by stimulating network formation, designing revenue models based on social challenges, focusing on the growth and upscaling of impact entrepreneurs and by making funding streams more accessible to impact entrepreneurs. There is a conscious focus on cooperation between impact first entrepreneurs and impact second entrepreneurs, who want to make a social contribution with their company, because both perspectives have a lot to offer each other.
The City Deal follows three tracks:
The fact that impact entrepreneurship is a prominent theme that offers opportunities is evident from the record number of participating parties: no fewer than 80 parties are uniting in this deal – municipalities, provinces, ministries, implementing organisations, knowledge institutions, intermediaries, financiers, consultancy firms and, of course, impact entrepreneurs. A complete overview is included at the bottom of this message and can be found on the City Deal page on AgendaStad.nl, where you can read more about this deal. In this City Deal, the parties will jointly commit themselves over the next three years to supporting entrepreneurs who contribute to broad prosperity in society.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 goals set by the United Nations to make the world a better place by 2030. They form a global compass for challenges such as poverty, education and the climate crisis. Read more about the SDGs on SDGNederland.nl.
City Deals are an administrative innovation, initiated by the Agenda Stad programme. In City Deals, various governments work together and with social partners and private parties on innovative solutions for complex urban issues. This collaboration stimulates understanding, decompartmentalization and knowledge exchange and offers scope for experimentation and substantiation for amendment of laws and regulations. The City Deal approach has been praised as a powerful example of administrative innovation in various studies by, among others, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, NSOB and Utrecht University. In 2019, City Deals was awarded a Best Practice certificate during the European Public Sector Awards.
