The Evolution of a Social Service Crowdfunding Platform towand an Investing Logic: The Meridonare Case Study

The study aims at configuring an innovative financial structure for social impact investments, capable of creating both social and economic value. Framing on the Theory of Change, we apply an exploratory analysis to the Meridonare case study. Meridonare is a donation/reward crowdfunding platform led by the Banco di Napoli Foundation, which engaging in philanthropy in the social sector. Over the years, the platform has changed the Foundation’s resource allocation procedures through the adoption of an “impact model” evaluation process. Accordingly, for each financing request, Meridonare defines a social evaluation report allowing the Foundation to establish which projects are worthy of additional funds as rewards. However, in its current state, the Meridonare crowdfunding platform lacks the investing perspective. Moving from its strengths and from the procedures based on a “pay-for-performance” rewarding mechanism, we propose the Social Bond Crowdfunding based (SBCb) as an innovative financial structure, thus shifting the role of the Foundation from impact facilitator to impact generator. In so doing, we identify a new instrument of Social Finance and contribute to the debate on the identification of new methods to make the social finance market as effective and efficient as possible.