Towards welfare devolution

Promoting strong partnerships with the public and private sectors in order to give an answer to people’s needs. This is the aim of Welfare Italia a social enterprise based in Milan that supports the development of a new relationship between people and their community.

Vita  meets Welfare Italia’s president , Johnny Dotti, who from 2002 to 2008 led Cgm cooperative group, the largest network of social enterprises in Italy. What’s the business model? By statute the company is controlled by a non-profit organization which is the cooperative group  Cgm. Banco Popolare and Intesa San Paolo have respectively invested 1 million and 1.5 million Euros. The capital stock is 231 thousand Euros,  200 thousand of which are from Cgm. Welfare Italia’s business plan is ambitious: it plans to open  130 centers in 5 years, 30 of which in the first two years of the project.   

Where is this experience leading you?

Working in the health field for us means working on shared culture, envisioning a system where there is a clear relationship between quality, cost, individual and collective responsibility.  Giving economic responsibility and aggregating demand allows you to control the need and to give it the right value.

The need keeps on growing…

This is one of the most interesting sectors for big corporations, it is worth between 30 and 50 billion a year. Welfare Italia is small but faces an important challenge. If we only thought in terms of pure function, we would only have to guarantee a good relation between costs and revenues. For us  quality is extremely important. According to us a visit has to last at least 20 minutes, it has to allow communication. If the relationship is good it also stabilizes the economy.

There are many corporates that would like to enter this business…

The big individual retirement accounts have already entered the business but they did it to maximize their profits. There is no collaboration with the institutions. The demand should control the offer.

Isn’t it so today?

Not in my opinion. In the last few months 300 additional health funds have been allocated but people don’t know about it. 7 milion workers have at their disposals additional services that they are not even aware of. Our challenge is to create forms of demand aggregation in order to have new forms of offer aggregation.

How has this new adventure turned out so far?

I feel like I’m in no man’s land. Not because I like solitude but because I believe we are crossing a real frontier. Vita is one of the few travel companions, but I’d like to have more of them. What gives me hope is that I keep on having good and unexpected encounters.

The identikit

Johnny Dotti was born in 1963. He is married to Monica and they have three children. He graduated in pedagogy and has been a social enterpreneur for a long time. He is the president of Welfare Italia and of the Foundation Solidarete. He teaches Analysis and management of complex social phenomena at Catholic University of Milan.

Find out more: www.welfareitalia.com