Five in-depth articles dedicated to the 2025 Social Report. In the third focus on skills-based volunteering
From 169 to 447 professionals involved: when corporate expertise enters communities, volunteering becomes knowledge transfer. There are forms of volunteering that make time, energy and organisational skills available. Skills-based volunteering adds something special: it circulates knowledge that normally remains within organisations. In 2025, the number of corporate professionals involved in the activities of the Fondazione Mondo Digitale rose from 169 to 447.
Managers, technicians and specialists take part in training sessions, mentoring activities, workshops and hackathons, bringing digital, professional and soft skills to educational and social contexts. The Annual Report defines this model as a strategic tool for connecting businesses and communities and enhancing people’s professional capital.
The interesting point is precisely the shift from individual expertise to shared knowledge.
One example highlighted in the Annual Report concerns the collaboration with Olivetti as part of the Coding Girls initiative. A User Experience manager from the company designed a workshop that integrated generative artificial intelligence and Design Thinking. Initially, 15 university tutors were trained, who then took the activities into schools, involving more than 400 pupils. A specialist skill is therefore not merely transferred from one person to a group. It becomes part of a learning chain: the professional trains the tutors, the tutors work with the pupils, and the pupils use what they have learnt to tackle new challenges.
This is a small example of the multiplier effect of knowledge.
For businesses, skills-based volunteering also represents a practical way of exercising social responsibility. Professionals encounter contexts, generations and problems different from those they are used to, experimenting with forms of collaboration that can also foster learning within the company itself.
For schools and communities, on the other hand, it means gaining access to up-to-date knowledge, professional experience and the language of the workplace – elements that are difficult to replicate in a traditional educational programme.
But the most interesting value may lie elsewhere: challenging the notion of expertise as an individual asset.
In a knowledge-based society, knowing something also means being able to share that knowledge.
The 447 expertise volunteers involved in 2025 therefore reflect not only an increase in corporate participation, but also a different concept of responsibility: professional expertise can become, at least in part, a community asset.
Discover how the Fondazione Mondo Digitale transforms research, innovation and education into shared value for people and local communities.Browse the 2025 Social Report
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