Efficiency of the public financial support granted to social enterprises

The paper deals with investigating analysis that reveals the efficiency of financial support received by social enterprises. Recently, this specific type of enterprise has been gaining more and more interest among managers and scientists. Some of them even noted that the social enterprise can be considered as a business of the future. Nevertheless, the key to the successful functioning on the market and development of this kind of enterprises is the financial support. One of the sources of obtaining financial support by social enterprises are public funds from EU assistance programs. However, these funds should be used effectively, because they are public property and therefore belong to all citizens (taxpayers). Therefore, in addition to the formal requirements set out in individual European Union aid actions focusing mainly on social goals, a traditional approach to assessing the efficiency of investments focusing on the business goals of the capital donor is also needed. Thus, the purpose of the study was to assess the efficiency of financial support granted to social enterprises. Efficiency was examined in a traditional way as the ratio of financial benefits obtained by the state thanks to granting support in relation to the financial costs spent on this support. The subject of the study consisted of 22 social enterprises of various forms (social cooperatives, associations, foundations) from the Warmian-Mazurian region, which received financial support in 2017-2018. The results show that a significant amount of money invested by the state to help in the formation and functioning of social enterprises is returned to the state budget.