Enhancing Social Innovation in Rural Areas (ESIRA) project aims at supporting the development of social initiatives and developing best practices in this area. The results of the project will be determined by the activities of the 9 MAPs to be created within ESIRA. The multi-actor platforms (MAPs) are society-science-policy interfaces established and active in collaboration aimed at co-defining issues and co-creating solutions for a given topic. They are built on the base of quadruple helix. This helix includes representatives of academia, society, science, and policy. The inclusion of different groups of actors ensures diversity of perspectives and experiences which can help achieve more elaborate and out-of-the-box results. MAP members must be carefully chosen to achieve the optimal activity of the MAPs. They MAP members must be chosen from the key stakeholder groups identified in the MAP area in relation to social innovations. The invited actors must represent not only all the axes of the quadruple helix but also all the vulnerable groups in the MAP area. The persons to become the MAP members must have the power and legitimacy of their stakeholder group as well as the sense of need and urgency to act and enhance social innovations in the rural areas of their MAP area. The choice of MAP managers – facilitator and monitor/co-facilitator – is also important for the success of MAP activities. They must have high skills of facilitating, creating inclusive dialogue and innovation spaces for co-creation as well as building capacity for all the MAP members and the skills to observe the interactions among the members. Deliverable 3.1 “MAP implementation guidelines” serves as a guide for foundation of the ESIRA MAPs and their management at further stages within the project. The following deliverables will offer more insight into best practices for the sustainability of community-led innovation spaces (deliverable 3.2 due in M36) and MAPs sustainability plans (deliverable 3.3 due in M46). The deliverable can also serve everybody interested in implementing multi-actor approach. Yet, it must be borne in mind that ESIRA's "scalable product" is not a specific social innovation. Its scalable product is its tested, documented, and replicable methodology for building the "stakeholders' networks” and "collaborative capacity" that allow other communities to innovate for themselves.