Mara, Giulia and Italian Non Profits
A portal where you can find every single not-for-profit association and professional that counts in the varied world of Italian non-profits. The site in question is called italianonprofit and its founders, are Mara Moioli and Giulia Frangione, respectively 32 and 30 years of age, and both graduates of the Master in Management of Non-Profit Organizations at SDA Bocconi School of Management.
"We are not part of the same class, though," says Mara. "I graduated in 2010, while Giulia in 2013. However we met in the classroom when I was telling my story at SDA. Then we got to know each other and we have developed together the ideaa long with some SDA Bocconi faculty members." The inspiration comes from the U.S. example with portals such as Charity Navigator and Guidestream USA. The question that got Mara and Julia started was: how to adapt these models to the Italian context? The answer was realized in March of 2016, when italianonprofit was officially launched. "It is a platform where donors and non-profit organizations come into contact," says Julia, "in practice non-profit entities sign up for free and provide a brief portrait of themselves, indicating what they do, who the people are, what the governance is and some other important data, such as total funds raised and number of donors. Access is also totally free for individuals who wish to consult this kind of information."
The business side of the enterprise consists of the industry analyses and reports that Mara, Giulia and their team conduct "on behalf by foundations, banks, businesses and even individual donors who are deciding whether to make contributions to a given non-profit organization. It's a huge information database that is the endpoint of a long journey", she adds,"which began at Bocconi and then developed through collaborations with non-profits and charities, a continuous work of sharing information and ideas with the world of Italy nonprofit organizations, which generally suffers from a dearth of data."
Currently italianonprofit, which is based in Milan and has offices in Turin and in Como, in the Comonext technology park, employs four people full time and is seeking new collaborators versed in big data analysis and digital technology. "We are growing," Julia and Mara say with a smile, "the organizations registered are about 300 but the pace is accelerating and the target of 1,000 non-profits registered will be reached much sooner than expected."