PULSE is an association founded in 2006 whose mission is to support impact entrepreneurship and make it accessible to as many people as possible.

At PULSE we are convinced that entrepreneurship is a formidable tool for inventing new solutions to social and environmental challenges, and that it is a tool that everyone can grasp if they are given the means to do so.

By inventing models that put people and the planet at the centre of concerns, entrepreneurship has the potential to transform the impact of our economies and meet our current needs without mortgaging those of future generations.

Over the last thirty years or so, impact entrepreneurship has made its way into the formal and informal lives of thousands of organisations and millions of individuals around the world, demonstrating that it is possible to create and sustain activities that provide answers to social needs that are poorly met by the state and the market, invent environmentally-friendly products or services, redistribute wealth and provide local employment.

It is these pioneering players that PULSE has been supporting since 2006 through programmes designed to help them develop their project from idea to scale-up, through training, individual monitoring, access to expertise, networking and access to financing tools.

It’s time to accelerate. Faced with growing inequalities and the amplification of climate crises, we also need to mass-market solutions. We’ve been working on this for five years: democratising this approach and making it accessible to as many people as possible. Geographically, by relocating support from large cities to smaller ones, by deploying programmes in rural or peri-urban areas – in so-called priority neighbourhoods in France or in townships in South Africa – and by deploying awareness-raising initiatives, which enable us to reach 17,000 entrepreneurs every year, and finally by strengthening local structures, by providing management support or teaching expertise to structures that already support entrepreneurs. To ensure that our actions are accessible, we are committed to building tailor-made programmes that are adapted to target groups traditionally excluded from entrepreneurship, and that take account of the obstacles they face.

While PULSE recognises entrepreneurship as an effective means of achieving a social or environmental impact, we also believe that it is an effective lever for empowerment and inclusion of people who are usually excluded from the economy because of their gender, age, level of qualification or the area in which they live. By enabling them to develop responsible economic activities, impact entrepreneurship makes a dual contribution to building a prosperous, peaceful and sustainable world.

PULSE is an association of the SOS Group, the leading SSE in Europe – with more than 700 associations in 40 countries, 22,000 employees and 2 million direct beneficiaries – and a pioneer of a 100% non-profit model, with no shareholders or dividends.