A new collaboration with Modulo 24 of *Il Sole 24 Ore*
For several months now, the insights of professionals from the Fondazione Mondo Digitale have been featured in Modulo 24 Terzo settore e sport, the professional section of the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore dedicated to the operational needs and in-depth analysis of non-profit organisations. The collaboration was established with the aim of sharing experiences, reflections and proposals on the transformations that are reshaping the role and work of social organisations. Digital technology is no longer merely a specialist field or a set of tools to be adopted. It plays a part in access to services, in planning, in organisational processes, in relations with communities and in building alliances between the third sector, institutions and businesses. This is why we need to tackle its opportunities, risks and social implications together, bringing to the public debate the insights that emerge from day-to-day work on the ground.
The first three articles in the section “The Future of the Third Sector” address three strategic challenges.
Digital citizenship as a social right
The first article, Why AI facilitation and literacy must become activities of general interest, proposes that digital facilitation and artificial intelligence literacy be explicitly recognised in the Third Sector Code.
The ongoing digitalisation of healthcare, social security, education and public administration risks leaving those with fewer digital skills behind. The availability of technologies, on its own, does not guarantee the ability to use them: local services, personalised support and ongoing training programmes are needed, capable of reaching even those groups currently least involved in national policies, starting with the over-75s.
Digital citizenship is thus interpreted not as an exclusively technological issue, but as a social right, which the third sector can help to make tangibly accessible.
Skills-based volunteering as social infrastructure
The second in-depth analysis, Digital skills-based volunteering, examines the value of professional knowledge made available to communities by corporate employees. This is not merely a matter of offering a few hours’ training or occasional advice. Skills-based volunteering can become a structural bridge between businesses, the education system and social organisations, facilitating processes of co-production and knowledge transfer.
In the experience of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, professionals and managers participate as trainers, mentors, coaches and role models in programmes aimed at students, teachers, jobseekers and vulnerable citizens. The skills acquired in corporate contexts are shared, adapted for educational settings and returned to society in the form of greater autonomy, critical thinking and new opportunities.
However, for this approach to realise its full potential, it must be embedded in ongoing projects, supported by the entire corporate organisation and accompanied by systems capable of assessing its impact. Skills-based volunteering can thus evolve from an emerging practice into a stable component of the country’s innovation and development policies.
When artificial intelligence enters calls for proposals
The most recent contribution, written by Ilaria Graziano, project manager, and Mirta Michilli, director-general of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, is dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence in social project design.
The article When AI enters calls for proposals: what really changes in project design distinguishes between a project as a document and a project as a process. Generative tools can help to analyse a call for proposals, extract criteria, check the consistency of sections, standardise the language used by partners and lighten the administrative burden.
However, they cannot verify whether the target groups have actually been listened to, whether the need is supported by reliable data, whether the partnership is solid, or whether the indicators can be meaningfully measured. The risk is producing proposals that are formally perfect but lack any real capacity for implementation. When the drafting process becomes simpler, therefore, contextual knowledge, the quality of relationships, accountability for decisions and the ability to learn during implementation become even more valuable. The challenge is not to replace the project designer, but to strengthen their role as a director: a figure capable of managing tools, sources, data, constraints and responsibilities, treating AI outputs as hypotheses to be verified rather than as answers to be accepted automatically.
An observatory on the transformations underway
Through this collaboration, Fondazione Mondo Digitale offers Modulo 24 readers the expertise gained over more than twenty-five years of social innovation, training and digital inclusion. The articles do not aim to offer abstract solutions, but to spark a discussion based on the needs encountered in projects, the experiments carried out with schools, businesses and institutions, and the issues that non-profit organisations face on a daily basis. The aim is to contribute to building a third sector capable not only of adapting to digital transformation, but of shaping it, so that technology and artificial intelligence become tools for participation, equity and community development.
