Commission boosted research and projects across all Europe aimed at fostering the Social Economy and social innovation. Therefore, since 2011, there has been increased attention from national authorities and international organizations towards the SSE and on how the SSE sector can be innovated both in terms of practices and in the support it can receive. The SBI focused on Funding, Visibility and legal framework for SEs. Many actions stemmed out of the SBI and the debates that it fostered. Some of them contributed to inform the Italian legal framework, such as social impact evaluation for third sector organizations 9 or the possibility for SSE organizations to be involved in public service co-planning10, while others are now part of the ecosystem, like social bonds 11. The Italian government has also recently launched initiatives such as the “Fondo Innovazione Sociale12” (Social Innovation Fund, see Box 2) aimed at experimenting Pay-By-Results models into the provision of public services by fostering cooperation between Public authorities, SSE organizations, Social Impact Evaluators and Financial institutions. BOX 2. The Social Innovation Fund The Social Innovation Fund was launched in December 2018 by the Italian Department of Civic Service, in order to promote the creation of innovative models, tackling emerging social needs. To pursue this goal, the Fund is expected to finance a set of piloting initiatives aimed at introducing impact investing schemes. The piloting phase lasts three years. During this period, the financial resources allocated by the Fund are exp ected to support the test of social innovation projects that deal with social inclusion, culture, and the fight against school drop-out. The projects are run by Local Governments in partnership with social economy actors. Financial institutions are also in volved from the beginning in order to build instruments that can finance the initiatives in the long run (e.g., Social Impact Bonds), along with evaluators that have to assess the achievement of the project’s outcomes. By supporting bottom-up social innovation processes, the Department aims at validating new operational models that could ensure both a more effective response to citizens’ needs and a more efficient allocation of public resources.
In parallel, the renovated interest at the policy level in Italy was also supported by increased interest on SSE organizations from the general population that conceived them as a possible instrument to solve local problems. Community Cooperatives (Cooperative di Comunità) are an example of the capacity of the SSE ecosystem to innovate its models. Community cooperatives have been increasingly set-up by citizens of marginal areas to self-organize the provision of services (Mori, 2015; Mori and Sforzi, 2018; Dumont, 2019). Other interesting examples are the Community Foundations, a model that gives the possibility to different actors, private and public, to share resources and implement activities to solve local problems (see the case study on “Fondazione Comunità di Messina” in Section 4). Even if already present in the Italian legal framework since 1998, Community Foundations have been increasingly promoted by existing bank foundations such as Fondazione Cariplo 13 in the last years (Assifero, 2016). Finally, during the Covid19 pandemic, the SSE sector in Italy tried to cope with the shock. SSE organizations active in commercial activities, such as cooperatives and social enterprises, faced problems similar to those of traditional for-profit companies, in addition to the ones related to the vulnerability of some of their beneficiaries. It is not yet clear how much the Covid19 pandemic will harm SSE organizations. Generally, SSE organizations continued to provide services to the most vulnerable, thus increasing the resilience of the 9
Art 4, 7, 9, 10 of the Law n106 - 6 June 2016. Article 55 Dgls - 3 luglio 2017, n. 117, Codice del Terzo settore. 11 Ubi Banca is one Italian banks which has been more active in promoting https://www.ubibanca.com/it/investimenti/social-bond). 12 See http://www.funzionepubblica.gov.it/innovazione-sociale. 13 See https://www.fondazionecariplo.it/en/progetti/fondazioni-di-comunita/fondazioni-di-comunit.html . 10
social
bonds
(see
25
