How Do Italian Foundations Draft Their Own Report Cards?

THANKS TO THEIR RESEARCH PROPOSAL ON FOUNDATIONS' IMPACT EVALUATION, CERGAS RESEARCHERS ELISA RICCIUTI AND FRANCESCA CALO' HAVE BEEN AWARDED THE IRPAS GRANT

Over the last 15 years the number of foundations in Italy has increased significantly – according to ISTAT (2013) they have grown by over 150% between 2001 and 2011. However, a systematic analysis of the methods implemented by foundations in order to assess their own effectiveness is still a desideratum.

It was exactly the will to fill this gap that earned the two CERGAS (Centre for Research on Health and Social Care Management) research fellows Elisa Ricciuti and Francesca Calò (who is a PhD student at the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health of the Glasgow Caledonian University) the Italian Research and Philanthropy Award, sponsored by Università di Torino, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and ASSIFERO (the Association of Italian grant-making foundations). Their research proposal follows a preliminary study (2014) which analysed an initial sample of Italian foundations that declared to perform impact evaluation. Over the next months Ricciuti and Calò will now be working on a wider sample, namely taking into account the foundations members of ASSIFERO and ACRI (which includes banking foundations) – ASSIFERO and ACRI encompass 102 and 88 institutions respectively. “There is no such thing as an exhaustive database of foundations in Italy. ASSIFERO and ACRI are the most comprehensive ones, and that is the reason why we chose them”, says Ricciuti. Through a desk-based documentary analysis and in-depth interviews, the two PhD students are going to provide empirical data on the methods used by the foundations to assess the productiveness of their own activities. “At the end of the study we will be able to draw a map of the various evaluation methods used by a significant sample of Italian foundations. This kind of research is completely innovative.”

Research results will be presented in October, during the Fifth Workshop of Foundations in Turin, and will be published in the form of a conference paper. Impact evaluation of foundations and their role in promoting social inclusion is the specific research field of Ricciuti and Calò, who are part of Cergas’ Non profit area, focused on philanthropy in Italy, Europe, North America and emerging countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa specifically).
 

by Elisa Bazzani