Scientific Coordinator: Riccardo Prandini
The project aims to promote advancements in research on the emerging phenomenon of impact finance from a socio-economic perspective. The project’s structure is based on the following fundamental considerations:
1) the idea that impact finance may be investigated and better understood by jointly analysing capital demand and supply;
2) the fact that the social entrepreneurship involved in such investments can take the form of company organizations that typically emerge from the third sector and of for-profit organizations. These entities adapt (e.g., through the use of advanced and strategic CSR models) to seize the opportunities and respond to the needs arising from new social challenges and subsequent transforming markets;
3) the fact that impact finance, as a phenomenon that is halfway between philanthropy and traditional finance, may exist only if it is able to employ the huge mass of private savings – which are not normally invested in purely philanthropic initiatives – to tackle specific social problems.