Leaner, More Digital and Innovative Foundations to Overcome the Social Crisis

In addition to businesses and the state, foundations have also had to review their action plans during the health crisis to ensure their development and cohesion, as they are often some of the most active players locally. The Italian philanthropy sector has revised its model by looking at both their internal organization and relations with external partners.

There has been a focus on guaranteeing more streamlined processes of access to funds, and initiating more open consultations and opportunities to hear various requests. In particular, non-profit organizations have also managed to broaden the scope of their interventions, revising the mission they had originally set for themselves if necessary, and moving towards setting up projects with a view to long-term partnerships. They are reinventing themselves as control rooms, able to activate and coordinate further fundraisers or donations from independent philanthropists. This is what emerges from the ongoing research project, Strategic Philanthropy and Current Pandemic Emergency: The impacts on philanthropic action, curated by Giuliana Baldassarre (SDA Lecturer of Government, Health & Not for Profit, Bocconi University). According to the research project – carried out in collaboration with Italian Non-Profit – the areas that were the focus of efforts by both corporate and family foundations last year include healthcare, food poverty, digital education and home care.


The health crisis has had such extensive social implications as to convince the philanthropy sector to adopt, for reasons of efficiency and timing, "digitization strategies in relations with entities and beneficiaries," adds Baldassarre. "This happened in the field of distance learning, achieving a wider range of action, as well as communication, starting new types of online events for instance, and also fundraising, to create new opportunities for contact with current and future donors."

Last but not least, the relationship with the public sector has changed, which remains fundamental in terms of spending capacity and ability to take action. On the one hand, more frequent discussions with public administration and closer collaborations with mayors and councilors are indeed being initiated. In Baldassarre's opinion, however, it is equally true that foundations are now experimenting with a greater degree of innovation, starting pilot projects which, as such, present a risk profile that is not always acceptable to the state.