So let's come to the lifeblood of our operation, money. Here again, the appropriate strategy will depend on your project and of course its economic model. These will determine how much money you will need, the type of financiers you will turn to and the remuneration or benefits in kind that you will be able to offer them. Let us come back to the example of Vitamine T, the back-to-work scheme whose investment strategy at a key moment in the company's history is relayed to us here by its director André Dupon. This strategy provides a good round-up of the issues that a social entrepreneur may face when it comes to funding. The Vitamine T group is a major social enterprise specialising in back-to-work schemes aimed at men and women who are excluded from the workforce, but who in addition to this difficulty, are also going through a number of issues that mean they need to spend one or two years with us, or even more, to get back on their feet, train, rebuild a personal and professional development plan. In the 2000s, my group experienced an extremely pivotal turning point followed by growth that has not subsided since, because as with classical entrepreneurs, with social workers who founded the group, we decided to change our model and, above all, significantly scale up our activities on the market and grow the number of jobs considerably. To do so, we were prompted to raise funds from institutional and private investors. The funding round at the time consisted of raising around 2 million euros to provide us with the capital funds to finance, to pre-finance, among other things, the development of a new area that has been hugely successful for us ever since, that of the circular economy, the processing of waste electrical equipment, end-of-life vehicles, and more recently waste management for discarded furniture. This funding round took place in an original way, a form of wizardry that was a huge success for us because we reached out both to private entrepreneurs to get them on board as minority contributors to our capital, i.e. the capital funds for our back-to-work schemes, and at the same time canvassed community investors, principally France Active who are the principal social financier here in France, to raise money through debenture loans, and this critical period in the 2000s led to us having specific resources available to maintain our development which is rather successful today. As you have understood, your sources of funding will evolve over the lifetime of your project. You will be able to turn to traditional funding sources available to all project leaders, or to specific finance dedicated to companies in the social and community economy sector. In this chapter, we will be interested in specific forms of funding, in particular through the concept of impact investing, introduced by Arnaud de Ménibus, founder of Entreprendre et Plus, and founding partner in Ticket for Change, and the concepts of patronage and sponsorship illustrated by
Madeleine Ceyrac, also from Entreprendre et Plus, with the example of Ticket for Change, and finally the concept of crowdfounding with a testimonial from Soufiane Iquioussen of Garages Solidaires. In these testimonials, pay particular attention to financiers' expectations: what is important for them, what return they expect and how to gain their trust.