Cultural heritage has, for a long time, been considered a source of wealth and well-being for economies. Currently, considerable investments have been allocated for its renewal and maintenance that often surpass the budgets of owners, local communities, and other interested users. Cultural heritage valorisation is expensive and is a great economic challenge. Infrastructural investment, i.e., conservation and restoration, are just one part of the total costs of cultural heritage preservation, while other investments relate to regular operation and maintenance. One of the most difficult decisions for those who design the cultural heritage restoration projects is how to finance them, i.e., what the most efficient financial instruments are for renewal of cultural heritage. These assumptions have instigated interest in the evaluation of services resulting from common good functions of cultural heritage, such as economic, educational, historical, technological, ecological, and climate, as well as tourism and recreational. Therefore, this article starts from the analysis of potential funding sources for cultural heritage through the European Union (EU) funds; a method of economic evaluation of the return on investments and cost–benefit analysis is suggested as a method that should be used in decision making on these interventions.

Entrepreneurs are constantly looking for new models to address growing global challenges in a sustainable manner. Over the past several decades, those challenges have been identified and responded to through the development of social entrepreneurship. There is a number of research dealing with the theoretical concepts of those topics; however, the definitions and framework for action are different from country to country. Having in mind that the main idea of social entrepreneurship is to enable decent work for employees and to gain broader welfare for communities, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the development of social entrepreneurship in Croatia. The research is focused on recent developments, connecting key definitions and principles of social entrepreneurship with common trends and concrete case studies. This study’s results show that there are different approaches to social entrepreneurship globally. However, social entrepreneurship in Croatia develops within a clear legal framework. The current state of social enterprises is connected with respective public policies, while the number and types of social entrepreneurs are constantly rising in the last few years. The results of the analysis also show that there are still actions to be taken in order to encourage future policy measures aiming to support social entrepreneurs in Croatia.

This paper examines the impact of public policy guidelines on social entrepreneurship in Croatia, focusing on regional disparities and the effectiveness of various policy areas. Using a mixed-method approach, this research highlights how these variations influence policy outcomes, particularly in terms of the diverse levels of support across regions. The findings reveal the necessity of adopting region-specific and policy-area-specific strategies to effectively nurture a robust social entrepreneurship ecosystem. Additionally, enhancing public awareness and education is found to be critical for fostering a supportive environment for social entrepreneurship.