Foqus Foundation: Social enterprise as a tool for analyzing reality
Renato Quaglia is a prominent cultural manager and social entrepreneur, particularly since he founded and manages, together with Rachele Furfaro and others, the Foqus Foundation, an educationally-focused social infrastructure that is contributing to the regeneration of Naples' Spanish Quarters and serves as a national benchmark for innovation. His book, "Il laboratorio della città nuova," recently published by Rubbettino, is dedicated to this initiative, among other things. This work is rich in theoretical references and disciplinary approaches that allow us to understand Foqus and potentially other similar initiatives, thus highlighting the value of social enterprise not only in strictly managerial and corporate terms but also in reflective and analytical terms. It is also a book explicitly stating its positions, particularly regarding the relationships between the various actors that comprise the social innovation and third sector ecosystem. These two fields are usually portrayed as almost identical, but in reality they present limited yet promising overlaps, as demonstrated by recent Istat data on socially innovative nonprofits. This is a small subset ( 8% of the total ), but it is strategically, operationally, and organizationally sound, and growing when considering specific legal forms such as foundations (which reach 13%) and social cooperatives (15%).
Perhaps it is precisely these individuals who could be turned to to resolve the asymmetries of power that, according to Quaglia, make this ecosystem narrow and unbalanced, thus limiting its transformative contribution. They could be, to quote the author again, the "subcontractors" who have succeeded, that is, those who have managed to escape the starvation cycle triggered by public and philanthropic tenders that reduce management and coordination costs to the bare minimum. In this regard, the book makes no shortage of accusations against philanthropic organizations, especially banking foundations, for having scaled the social sector through a kind of "takeover bid," investing a relatively limited share of their considerable assets, and moreover, unevenly distributed across the country (particularly along the north-south axis of the country) .
Added to this is the fact that expert systems (research centers, think tanks, evaluation bodies, consulting firms) have been contracted, helping to build a management system and a narrative regarding resource allocation that increasingly focuses less on those who are truly trying to address the socio-environmental challenges of our time and more on those who craft responses that are "compliant" with the artificiality of calls for proposals . It is therefore important to ask how these contractors have managed to avoid being swallowed up by what Quaglia himself defines as a "metaverse" of calls for proposals, technocratic policies, evaluation models, and support actions. All this is done to enrich the book's proposed solutions with realism, which focus on revitalizing alliances and partnerships not only with philanthropy but also with the public sector, despite the latter's evident limitations even when engaging collaboratively with civil society.
A first element of realism concerns the capacity for accountability, which is often labeled as a "path to ruin" when compared to the general interest goals and the propensity for innovation of nonprofit organizations. In reality, it can become a crucial organizational function for developing information systems, including tech- and data-driven ones , that increase learning capacity, thus fostering new development paths. Furthermore, strategically efficient reporting can better manage interactions with resource providers (foundations, but also credit institutions and investment funds) who see accounting systems as the key to more accurately reporting the impact of their interventions.
A second factor concerns the pluralism not only of activities and projects but also of the business models pursued by third sector entities and social enterprises, which increasingly make them resemble local conglomerates of social and local economies rather than specialized startups. While the latter are more easily investable (and controllable) through tools and approaches transferred from tech to social innovation, in the latter case, as the book argues, it will be a matter of creating patient joint ventures characterized by principles of intersectionality of challenges and integral impact. But for this to happen, everyone, including investors, must step back from their hegemonic ambitions over social processes, thus making room for the generative role of communities.
Photo from Foqus's Facebook page
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