Social economy differs from the pure market economy by the importance it places on individual and community needs. More specifically, the social economy sector is made up of cooperatives and non-profit organizations (NPO). To be considered as part of this sector, though, enterprises must sell goods or services even if they are non-profits.
Québec has approximately 11,200 social economy enterprises that, together, generate revenues of $47.8 billion and employ close to 220,000 people. Of these, 75% are NPOs, 21% are non-financial cooperatives and a little over 3% are financial cooperatives or mutual associations. These enterprises have a long life-span: 39% of them have been in operations for over 30 years and 35% of them, for 16 to 30 years.
As a group, social economy enterprises have 13.4 million members, of which 2.4 million are members of non-financial cooperatives, 4.5 million are members of NPOs, 1 million are members of mutual associations and 5.5 million are members of financial cooperatives.