Italy’s non profit media hits the stock market

VITA non profit magazine, Italy’s only media company dedicated to talking about and informing the country’s third sector, is more than just a newspaper. Since it published its first copy in 1994 featuring an investigation into one of the world’s best known charities, Red cross or gold cross?, the company has grown in size as well as scope to become a unique content company specialized in civil society issues. And by the end of September it will have achieved yet another first: being the first European joint stock company which by statute reinvests all its dividends back into the company to be listed on the stock market. The stock market in question is the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), London Stock Exchange’s international market for small to medium growing companies, a choice that reflects that being based in Milan does not stop VITA from being international.

VITA’s products range from a weekly newspaper, VITA non profit, and monthly academic journal, Communitas, to the three websites: vita.it, news for the Italian non profit sector; vitaeurope.org, the voice of European civil society (in English) and afronline.org, news about Africa by Africans, also in English. In 2001 VITA launched VitaConsulting, a non profit consulting and communication agency that works with charities, foundations and companies across Europe to promote, improve and communicate their non profit ventures.

In a country and world where the media tends to be dominated by tycoons, VITA has struggled to maintain its independence. But sometimes being founded on the stuff dreams are made of rather than with any kind of business sense can pay off. In VITA’s case it has and perhaps the model it has created over the past 15 years can be of inspiration to others elsewhere.

An interview with the Founder and president of the content company, Riccardo Bonacina, explains the reasons behind VITA’s newest challenge and highlights some the key factors that have led to VITA’s success.

Isn’t there a paradox in a company that doesn’t share its profits with its shareholders competing in a market in which success is measured by profits alone?

At first we asked ourselves the same question. But there are no inherent legal, economic or even social contradictions to our decision to be listed on the stock market. We see our firm identity – made firmer still by our statute – as an asset and we hope to be an example to companies everywhere.

Surely this isn’t as easy at it sounds though …

No, I wouldn’t say it was easy. But we are fortunate enough to have developed an organizational model that really works. We are a company, a joint stock company, and as such we are for-profit players. But our shareholders are made up of both corporate and non profit investors. Sixteen of Italy’s most important charities own 50.25% of VITA’s shares, and seven out of ten of the board of directors are civil society actors. On top of this we have an editorial board that includes almost 60 Italian charities, and they all have a say in how we produce our news and run our company.

This move is not just on paper. What kinds of structural changes are you having to make?

This is the really important aspect of the challenge. Last year we started planning a number of changes directed at creating viable, long term solutions – soon the newspaper will have a new look, we have invested new resources into our consulting agency, reaffirmed our international identity by creating a new brand called VITAinternational and are launching a new company called VITAweb, which will provide more and better services to its 70 thousand users. All the decisions we have made have been the result of consultations with our stakeholders, advisors and staff. We know we are embarking on a big project that will need big money if it is going to work. But what strikes me is the enthusiasm that our plans are met with.

VITA is already successful. Why the need to grow?

And complicate our lives? I have thought long and hard on that very question and found the answer in Charles Péguy, who said that eternity is conserved “by means of new temporal beginnings, by means of precarious, temporal new starts”. We should be wary of becoming lukewarm to our principles and so should try a new start of our own. At the same time, the country we live in and the part of society that we talk about require us to express ourselves more firmly and therefore more loudly, to more people. When we met with our shareholders in 2009 to discuss our future we agreed that in order to change the world and bring about real change we had to think big. No maybes, no ifs and lots of will to innovate.