The 2019 Lang Italia Philanthropy day was the fourth edition of this event I attended. This moment is one of those very few occasions that are available in Italy where different representatives from national philanthropy organisations can come together, network and discuss a broad variety of topics.

We mostly came from different backgrounds, activities and cultures but because of these diversities of perspectives we can enrich our common interests finding stimulating inputs, ideas and subjects that can be further deepened once we all go back to our realities.

Personally, my focus was the world of corporate foundations which is a quite specific environment to deal with and for which not enough moments of reflections are organised. I followed with particular interest the session dedicated to how corporate philanthropy and corporate foundations can work together effectively. It reflected a hot topic in our ‘world’, and the discussions focused on the strong effort many organisations are doing to reply to some key questions. How can a corporate foundation bring a contribution to the coporate social responsibility strategy of the corporation? How can they work together to establish a win-win situation for all the major stakeholders involved bringing a real added value to the society at large? How can they maximise their impacts by joining their forces?

These, in a nutshell, I think are the key questions many organisations are reflecting on or should at least start seriously thinking about to drive a real positive social change. I hope these new reflections will be further analszed in the future both at national and international level.

Corporations and corporate foundations have huge potential together and they can have a tremendous impact in supporting and boosting social change. It would be very interesting to find more ad hoc events or working groups dedicated to this particular form of philanthropy.

On the basis of this personal conviction, let me conclude with an invitation. Please feel free to come contact me in Geneva at the STMicroelectronics Foundation, if you feel that we can join our experiences and (why not) the difficulties we have also faced to find solutions to common issues.

Giovanna Bottani is Operations Senior Consultant at STMicroelectronics Foundation