Development of the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in the northwestern region of Russia

The article deals with the concept of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem and analyzes existing practices of social entrepreneurship in the northwestern region of Russia. Social entrepreneurship is designed to solve social problems through the use of sustainable economic instruments; social business results in social transformations associated with improving the quality of life of individual social groups and citizens. The state, the social capital, the market for social services and the infrastructure support were identified as the main elements and subjects of the ecosystem. The research is based on federal and regional statistics on the development of the non-governmental sector and social entrepreneurship, data from registers of social service providers, as well as regulatory legal acts on social entrepreneurship. Data analysis was carried out for all the main subjects of the northwestern region (St. Petersburg, Leningrad region, Kaliningrad region, etc.). The study results show that the legal foundations for the development of social entre-preneurship have been developed. There are various measures of state support, including state subsidies, loans, with a fairly wide regional diversity observed. At the same time, at present the non-governmental sector of social services does not fully meet the existing needs. This is reflected in the insufficient number of socially oriented nonprofit organizations and social entrepreneurs, and in the relatively small proportion of the population involved in the non-governmental sector of social services. However, we should note the active development of the infrastructure for training social entrepreneurs, which includes accelerators, a business incubator, information and consulting support for social entrepreneurs.