FairShares Labs

In 2016, six partner organisations (VSBI, Social Enterprise International, ECOSynergy, Elephant, SLAP and KophHandUndFuss) bid successfully for an EU grant to set up FairShares Labs that apply the FairShares Model to social enterprise development. Each lab developed a process for incubating ideas (using a FairShares Planner) and managing projects and education offers (using a FairShares Platform).  In 2017, ECOSynergy was replaced by Zöld-Aktív Social Cooperative. The project completed successfully in October 2019 with an evaluation score of 86/100 (‘Very Good’).

The results were discussed at a conference at the University of Pec (Hungary) in June 2019. Roger Schmidtchen, the project co-ordinator, reported that 30 FairShares trainers and 100 participants had received training in 15 Labs across five countries. The final reports were published in October 2019, and a book describing the project methodology was published in February 2020.

Order the Book from:

If you experience any problems (or have a bulk purchase) contact the FairShares Association Ltd to discuss your order request. 

Download the final project outputs:

Sign Up for professional development courses created by members of the FairShares Association

Project Introduction

Idea workshops, incubation workshops and planning workshops will be combined with coaching support to help groups prepare a FairShares Canvass that outlines their FairShares Plan.

The FairShares platform and planner can be accessed at:
https://fairsharesplatform.eu/

Elements of a FairShares Lab

The labs bring together three elements of the FairShares Model:

…with learning techniques and ICT technologies that will help professionals run a Living Lab:

…guided by an understanding of:

As participants develop their work within a FairShares Lab, they will answer questions about their FairShares enterprise. The FairShares Canvass helps participants understand the relevance, feasibility and sustainability of their ideas and turn them into social enterprise (business) plans.

For background, download the original brochures on FairShares Labs in:

Download our ‘Country Context’ reports (from IO1) to learn about the environment for supporting FairShares

Download our series of case studies (from IO1) which have been evaluated against the FairShares Model