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Business models are usually used to describe how business entities sustain their competitive advantage, offer their customers better value and create good cooperation with their partners. While the literature is rich with best practice examples among for-profit business entities, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are rarely observed and compared through the business model concept. Nonprofit organizations are mostly viewed as mission-driven organizations, which is why the business side is often rather neglected. The success of nonprofit organizations is usually measured by their impact in the community, which makes their activities dynamic and very much dependable on their business ecosystem. The goal of this paper is to identify specific characteristics of business models in the nonprofit sector, to evaluate how well nonprofit organizations communicate their value proposition to their customers, what distinguishes them from other nonprofits and what they are doing to develop a successful and sustainable organization. The empirical study covers 10 Croatian nonprofit organizations. The business model canvas is used to describe and compare their business models. The findings represent a good basis for understanding the performance of nonprofit organizations, and can serve as a framework for specific policies and programs aimed at development of nonprofit organizations.

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Rural development has become a significant policy challenge in Europe. More employment opportunities have increasingly been concentrated in urban areas, leaving rural regions with ever-continuing down-fall in terms of population size and economic growth. In this context, rural entrepreneurship activity that positively influences rural communities is embedded in broader social or structural policies at the European level. The aim of the article is to investigate societal and economic challenges and their innovative solutions in five European rural regions: Croatia (Slovania), Germany (Münsterland, Saxony-Anhalt), Poland (Małopolska), and Portugal (Alto Minho). This study follows a multi-case method which investigates the diversity of challenges and solutions in selected European rural areas. The comparative analysis reveals that most essential activities aimed at alleviating the development problems of rural areas include education of local communities, improvement of economic and digital infrastructure, activities supporting production and promotion of local products, promotion of cooperation between local communities and producers, and stronger orientation of local policy towards financial support of production enterprises and farms. The conclusions resulting from the study lead to formulating recommendations concerning rural policies in the context of developing entrepreneurship strategies in rural areas.

The aim of this paper is to critically review and map the network of business support institutions in Croatia and their impact on the devel­opment of the small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) sector. There are many research findings in the literature that link the development of the SME sector to the level of institutional development, but rarely articles that link business support institutions to the improvement of the business ecosys­tem (reduction of barriers). Through in-depth interviews with the heads of business support institutions, this paper aims to explore the impact of busi­ness support institutions on reducing barriers that hinder the establishment and development of SMEs. The results show that business support institu­tions do not have enough resources (time, money, knowledge, etc.) to pro­vide the necessary assistance to SMEs, but also to fulfill other tasks and obli­gations for which they are responsible. The results of the study can be used for the development of better SME policies, but also for the development of services that better meet the needs of SMEs