At the Sophia University Institute (Loppiano – Florence), a training opportunity for people who want to (re)discover and enhance the relational power of giving.

It is a well-known fact that giving is a way to meet the real needs of people who live in difficult situations. What is less known is that giving can also play a fundamental social role, by helping to establish and re-establish particularly valuable relationships that lead to human fulfilment. This is why knowing about this power, and finding strategies to unleash it, might be interesting for people who are involved in fundraising and social projects or cherish the relational dimension of human life.

Hence the idea – supported by Fundraiserperpassione and ASSIF-Associazione Italiana Fundraiser, as part of the 2019 Dono e Dintorni (Gift and surroundings) call for tenders, in collaboration with Fondazione Per Sophia and Sophia University Institute – to introduce  a training course, addressing a maximum of 20 professional fundraisers, entrepreneurs, and social planners, entitled, “GIFT4RELATION“, to be held at the Sophia University Institute (Loppiano, Florence), on 28-29 February and 13-14 March 2020.

The aim of the course, which will be held by Licia Paglione, sociologist and professor of Sociology of Human Relationship, and Andrea Galluzzi, electronic engineer and PhD student in Philosophy of Technology, is to promote a vision of giving as a very ancient practice that is still found in contemporary societies, but whose profound meaning is often misunderstood. This will be achieved through an in-depth study of the insights that are found in social and anthropological sciences.

As a matter of fact, according to the socio-anthropological perspective, rooted for example in the work of Marcel Mauss, giving is not seen mainly as a unilateral act that promotes the transfer of goods, often to people in need, as it is often understood today. Instead, it is considered as a system of exchange based on reciprocity, which acts as a “privileged agent of sociality“, that can help build bonds of trust between people and populations. Such bonds that are known as “relational goods” in contemporary socio-economic literature.

Rediscovering this meaning of giving can support the design and implementation of fundraising actions that embrace the “binding” power of giving, so that they can also be directed towards its enhancement.

This course, in addition to theoretical categories, aims to provide operational tools, drawing from the convergence between the socio-anthropological theory of giving and Social Network Analysis, to analyze the relational impact of donation practices that are used for fundraising purposes, to show donors, donation recipients, and all stakeholders how effective they are in creating “relational goods”.

For more information:

www.gift4relation.weebly.com and gift4relation@gmail.com