Short summary:
For years, The Good Lobby, together with a vast network of student associations, entertainment industry workers, athletes, knowledge workers, and online information communities, has been fighting to remove barriers to the right to vote by making off-site voting possible once and for all in Italy — the only European country, with the exception of Malta and Cyprus, where it is still not possible.
Thanks to our campaign, supported by a multi-channel fundraising strategy that has mobilised national and international philanthropy, family offices, foundations supporting grassroots movements, major donors, and more than 800 small donors, including through crowdfunding campaigns, we have succeeded in securing two pilot programmes for off-site voting and are now working to secure a permanent law before the next general election.
Full description:
When we began working on this campaign, together with a committee of former out-of-town students who had been active on the issue since 2008, we believed its grassroots nature made it suitable for support from philanthropic organisations focused on civic movements. That intuition proved right: we secured our first small grants from Guerrilla Foundation for two years of joint activities between the Committee and The Good Lobby, totalling €15,000. This was also our first experience acting as a fiscal host for a decentralised group that had not yet formally established itself as a legal entity.
Later, despite the issue’s cross-party relevance, we encountered some reluctance from Italian philanthropy, which is traditionally conservative and rarely engaged in supporting initiatives related to democratic quality, the rule of law, and civic space.
We therefore relied on the relationships and trust we had built over the years with Open Society Foundations, which enabled us to secure a larger grant for the following years.
From the beginning, we also developed digital fundraising campaigns. Over time, and thanks to the impact of pilot projects on out-of-town voting, we earned the trust of more than 800 donors. In recent years, we have also gained support from the Italian banking foundation Compagnia di San Paolo and from a family office, helping to innovate the Italian philanthropic landscape.
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