Caritas Poverty Report 2024 on poverty and social exclusion in Italy: the contribution of the Institute of Management of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna with the chapter dedicated to the social impact of charitable interventions

The Institute of Management of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa contributed to Caritas Italiana's Poverty Report 2024, ‘Fili d’erba nelle crepe. Risposte di speranza'  presented in Rome on Tuesday 12 November. In particular, the Regenerative Innovation working group composed of Andrea Piccaluga, Margherita Giannotti, Maria Giulia Garcea and Gianluca Gionfriddo worked on the drafting of the fourth chapter of the Poverty Report, entitled ‘L’impatto sociale degli interventi caritativi: l’esperienza dei progetti 8xmille Caritas' .
The chapter presents a model for assessing the social impact of charitable interventions carried out with a share of the 8xmille funding allocated to the CEI.

"Our contribution is the result of a collaborative approach, based on listening to the reflections coming from the concrete experiences of the Caritas Dioceses we visited all over Italy. Each phase of the co-design was guided by the desire to build a model that reflected the way in which Diocesan Caritas support the overcoming of poverty,' says Andrea Piccaluga.

The social impact of 8xmille funding

Several Caritas Diocesan participated in all phases of the project, contributing to the definition of the social impact assessment model, identification of beneficiaries and indicators. There are two main objectives with which the collaboration with Caritas Italiana was carried out. The first one concerns theinternal accompaniment, aimed at supporting Caritas in enhancing the capacity to identify needs and to design charitable interventions more and more effective in generating social impact. The second concerns external reporting, i.e. the communication of the results achieved, highlighting what Caritas concretely does, according to principles of transparency and immediacy.

The chapter drafted within the Poverty Report 2024 reports the first output and outcome data emerged from a pilot testing phase of the social impact assessment model carried out with 46 Caritas Diocesan between March and July 2024. The results obtained mark the start of a path to tell the impact generated by charitable activities and the beauty of a collective and supportive action.