Finally, though government in the United States is relatively uninvolved with social enterprise,
it does participate in the one area European governments (with the exception of a few)
tend not to: government contracts for social enterprise products (Borzaga&Defourny, 2001).
The U.S. federal government provides an example with legislation that creates demand for
social enterprise products through set-aside funds that purchase goods produced by 36,000
employees in sheltered workshops. Over half of all U.S. state governments operate comparable
set-aside programs. Europeans can strengthen existing social enterprise operations by
encouraging central and local governments to enter into similar supportive arrangements.