Giuseppini del Murialdo, Compagnia di San Paolo and Fondazione Denegri Social Venture to let SocialFare grow.

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Turin, June 2019 – It’s official: Compagnia di San Paolo and Denegri Social Venture Foundation enter the capital of SocialFare, born in Turin in 2013. The two investors agreed to support the development of SocialFare which have a strong focus on the acceleration of social impact knowledge and entrepreneurship.

Thanks to financial support and expertise of Compagnia di San Paolo and Denegri Foundation, SocialFare will be able to scale innovative solutions to the most pressing social challenges, develop research and experimentation in public-private partnerships, accelerate capacity building for the social impact and impact startups. The entire SocialFare ecosystem will be able to grow nationally and internationally, strengthening Turin as a reference city for social innovation and impact investing.

“Congregazione dei Giuseppini del Murialdo wanted to found SocialFare in order to give concrete answers to the challenges that the economic crisis and youth unemployment have made emerge in a dramatic and new way – tells Don Danilo Magni representing the Congregation. – With SocialFare the “Murialdini” have understood and intend to update, with the Social innovation approach, their own mission in favour of young people in different contexts, with particular attention to education, work and the enhancement of communities. In this context, the contributions of entrepreneurial know-how and financial capacity of the new members, Compagnia di San Paolo and Denegri Social Venture Foundation, together with the educational approach of the Congregation, can give an important and further boost to the identity and to the mission of SocialFare”.

“Compagnia di San Paolo has built over the years an integrated supply chain in the field of sustainable social enterprise,” – said Alberto Anfossi, General Secretary of Compagnia di San Paolo – supporting Nesta Italia and Open Incet, from Impact Hub to the three-year agreement to favor of Torino Social Impact, recently signed with the Chamber of Commerce of Turin.

In the first place, our model is based on the use of supply and investment tools, as well as systemic action with respect to the formation of the Turin and Piedmontese eco-system. The objective of Compagnia di San Paolo is to build a chain of social innovation that, starting from the activities of accelerating knowledge and accelerating business, leads social impact organizations to achieve sustainability and in some cases to become attractive to private capital. The Company’s investment in SocialFare is part of this chain, alongside interventions such as the Seed call for tenders and investments already made in SocialFare Seed and in the Oltre Venture fund.

In the past, our Foundation supported SocialFare by providing a startup grant; the growth and the first positive results of the model led the Company, alongside important investors, to capitalize with € 1.6 million a vehicle to seed the accelerated startups (SocialFare Seed srl) and then to develop the hypothesis of acquiring, in collaboration with the Denegri Social Venture Foundation, the control of SocialFare. The objective of the acquisition by the Company is to move from a logic of supply support to a capital investment one shared with important financial actors to support the growth of the social accelerator in a logic of professionalism and openness to the market “.

“We believe our entry into the social capital of SocialFare is a significant and consistent result for the newly founded Denegri Social Venture Foundation – states Corrado Ferretti, Vice President of the Foundation – whose work is far from mere disbursement but focuses on operations that combine entrepreneurial skills with initiatives capable of concretely transforming society. There is no coincidence that this synergy was born in Turin, a city that for years has been a promoter of a profound transformation in the way of doing business. The big goal – continues Ferretti – is to make SocialFare a point of reference at European level, a goal that can only be achieved by combining entrepreneurial skills, financial capital, and opportunity networks of all those involved.”

Laura Orestano, CEO of SocialFare, expressed the satisfaction of the whole SocialFare team – which is characterized by a strong female and under-35 component – and by the many partners who have come to join them into Social Renaissance, “hoping that this renewed structure could be the starting line for a model of social and financial convergence essential for accelerating know-how and innovative solutions in terms of models, services and products relevant to the company. This approach is necessary, at local and national level, also for a new development policy that focuses on people, territories and communities with their expert knowledge and their entrepreneurial potential and sustainable innovation. “

On Tuesday 9th July, at Fondazione Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, the key players of social innovation gathered to discuss about the importance and the benefits of evaluating social impact on the occasion of two different events.

During the morning, Torino Social Impact in partnership with Social Value Italia held a conference concerning the process of evaluating social impact from the perspective of great donors. Speakers from the main italian philantropic organisations, foundations as well as public and private institutions – Camera di commercio di Torino, Università Cattolica di Milano, Human Foundation, Impresa Sociale Con i bambini, Fondazione Zancan, KPMG, Fondazione Unipolis, Fondo Beneficenza Intesa San Paolo, Fondazione Alta Mane, Fondazione Sviluppo e Crescita CRT- shared their experiences and methods. 

From the different speeches a series of commonalities emerged: first of all, the problem of establishing a standard for evaluation, since each project has its own peculiar content and context. Thus, considering those features in the process of evaluating social impact has been pointed as the primary best practice. Secondly, most of the speakers highlighted that the process of evaluating social impact can be a useful tool for donors: for example, to consider the scale and quality of their actions, to reflect critically about their operations, deducing both their mistakes and achievements; moreover, to strengthen the relationships with the partners.

In the afternoon, Torino Social Impact and Social Impact Agenda per l’Italia presented the position paper “Progettare l’Innovazione Sociale: impact investing e fondi UE” curated by Pwc and Human Foundation. The object of this second debate was, instead, the importance of social impact oriented investments by public administrations, considering the potential of their actions on the local territory. Representatives from the European Commission and some of the key stakeholders from the Piedmont region – Camera di commercio di Torino,  Regione Piemonte, Finpiemonte, Fondazione CRT, Compagnia di San Paolo, Legacoop Piemonte, Confcooperative Piemonte Nord – stressed the need to foster partnerships between the public sector, companies and the human capital represented by local organisations and citizens, to create and manage innovative solutions for social issues. 

 

The 2019 Academy of the European Social Innovation Competition is due to kick off in the Italian city of Turin next week. The 3-days educational and networking event, starting on 16 July, has become a highlight of the social innovation calendar in Europe – each year it brings industry experts into contact with some of Europe’s most promising social entrepreneurs.

Last month, the European Commission announced the 30 participants, from 19 countries, who were chosen to attend the Academy of the European Social Innovation Competition. These ‘Semi-Finalists’ were selected from 543 applicants from across Europe and they will be trained through workshops delivered by experienced social innovators and articulated around four key topics: innovation, impact, sustainability and scale.

On the occasion of this important initiative, Nesta Italia organizes the public event “The Future of European Social Innovation”. During the event, industry leaders will gather to discuss the state-of-the-art of social innovation at the local level and the success stories of the European Social Innovation Competition. Some of the key players in the innovation world will be asked to discuss important issues related to climate change and, more generally, how social innovation can support a positive and systematic change in today’s society.

The event will be held on 17 July at the Le Musichall Theater in Turin. Registration and more information at this link.

Launched in memory of social innovation pioneer Diogo Vasconcelos, the European Social Innovation Competition is a challenge prize run by the European Commission across all EU Member States and Horizon 2020 associated countries. Now in its 7th year, the Competition acts as a beacon for social innovators in Europe, employing a proven methodology for supporting early-stage ideas and facilitating a network of radical innovators shaping society for the better. Each year the Competition addresses a different issue facing Europe. This year the focus is: Challenging Plastic Waste.

The Competition is organised by the European Commission with support from Nesta, Kennisland, Ashoka Spain, the European Network of Living Labs and Scholz & Friends.

The closing date of the course Skills for social innovation is coming: it ends on July 19th, when the selected teams will present the results of the project they worked on with their mentors in a short two-minute pitch each.

The day has a rich program and it will begin with the workshop “Exploring possible futures”, organized by Alberto Robiati, Director of the Human + Foundation.

The workshop aims to take a look at possible future developments, both individual and collective. This is a work on “Futures Thinking”  which is useful for creating a mentality capable of generating innovation processes and producing shared strategic and motivating visions for a team, an organization, a community.

In the afternoon, the presentation of the projects in front of a qualified jury will be held, followed by a moment of reflection.

The winning team will receive a € 1500 prize!

The City of Turin has launched the second edition of the call that aims to encourage the generation, development, testing and implementation of innovative projects with a social impact by offering third sector actors support in building crowdfunding campaigns based on online collection of micro -Donations.

The Call is divided into two phases: during the first phase (application deadline: 10 September 2019) it will be possible to apply to the Social Crowdfunding Academy, a training course aimed at acquiring all the necessary skills on the subject. Among the participants, 6 projects will be selected for the second phase: those projects will be accompanied and supported for the implementation of their crowdfunding campaign.

The call and the application form are available here.

During the first edition of the call, 48 teams had been selected and admitted to the Social Crowdfunding Academy in June and July 2018. The project “Colori Vivi” by the non-profit organization Article 10 at the end of June has succesfully launched its first crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter on 28 June 2019. The remaining 5 projects will launch their campaigns at the end of September 2019.

The service is implemented as part of PON METRO – measure 3.3.1.b and implemented by the European Crowdfunding Center based in Incet, Turin.