The Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) aims to be a greenhouse for education and research in social entrepreneurship particularly emphasising the importance of civil society for the integration of socially vulnerable groups. CSEs activities are thus focused on the third sector but also includes cooperative relations and interplay between the three sectors of society: the public sector, the private sector and the civil society. The main objective of CSE is to contribute to a competence boost of the third sector agents, including organisations and private individuals engaged in voluntary social work. Hence CSE contributes to the development of the third sector’s institutional capacity and performance as a significant factor in the development of the Danish welfare state.

CSE establishes and communicates knowledge on how to maintain the innovative strength of the third sector and to develop this strength in interplay with agents from the public and private sectors.

The CSE activity plan is based on two streams of programming, each of which constitutes a basis for benchmarking. T he first stream is research, and the second is education. Both streams are tied to the overall objectives of stimulating the civil society, including NGOs and other organisations and agents engaged in voluntary social work.