The national strategy for higher education of the Albanian government (2008--2013) stated the urgent need for universities to increase their role in the social and economic development of the local and regional environment. In order to achieve this goal, the main action proposed by the strategy was the setting up of regional development centres by public higher education institutions. With this purpose, the Tempus project "Developing Third Mission activities in Albanian Universities" (U3M-AL) has promoted third mission activities in most of the public universities by training university staff, establishing the regional development centres and creating an Albanian network for promoting third mission. These initiatives are contributing to the external visibility of universities as valuable partners for cooperation. In this paper, we describe the activities developed by this project, the outcomes and the expected impact on Albanian society.