We are here in Villa Necchi Campiglio with Alessandra Varisco who is the FAI International Manager, and she deals with individual fundraising. Fundraising is a core activity for the foundation, and is a core activity in terms of the function of heritage management. Thank you Alessandra for being with us. You're welcome. How is fundraising organized inside FAI? Fund raising is basically organized in three areas, which accounts for the three main sources of income. First of all, the most important is individual fundraising. Which account for about two thirds of the total income. That includes memberships at all levels and middle and major donors. Then we have corporate fundraising, and that includes corporate memberships. Core marketing deals, sponsorships, long term partnerships, and in-kind donations. And then we have the third area which is the public bodies and institutions and associations and foundations. And basically for each project the three areas come together, and they are able to concur to the same goal. And so we are given, basically, a budget cost in order to restore the properties that need to be opened, and so the three areas work together. They collaborate in order to reach that goal. Often the projects are basically a mix of all the sources of income. Well, there are many projects that the foundation established in order to do fundraising, and as you mentioned the three parts of the fundraising activity concur to the final goal. What I'm interested in now is understanding an example of sort of best practice or a project that you think is quite relevant in order to show the importance of fundraising and how fundraising is organized and implemented. Well, one very good example of this fundraising mix is certainly the Bosco di San Francesco, the restoration project for *Saint Francis's Woods the Bosco di San Francesco, which is the Saint Francis's woodland in Assisi. And this property was donated by a bank in 2008, and then was opened to the public in 2011. Basically all these three areas worked together. We were able to raise funds in many different ways. For example, we raised funds from companies with co-marketing deals, sponsorships, and in-kind donations, and they amounted for over a million, actually for over two million euros. Well, I must say that the total project was about 4.3 million budget-wise, and so companies individual fund raising also was very important, because we ran, at that point, our first national campaign. So we had Thanksgiving, we had members appeals, we did some appeals on the prospect list, for example. And we had all sorts of donations for adoptions; we had trees adopted as well as benches in this beautiful landscape area. We also were able to have all the one hundred twenty-one trees that actually form the third paradise which is a work of art by artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. We also had income from the FAI golf cup which was run the FAI local delegations. So it was a very-and public bodies of course, so institutions also concured to reach that budget. So in this case we have an example therefore of co-creation because the people that were asked to give money for the foundation also contributed in the art creation, because the- Yes, absolutely. Michele Pistoletto was possible because of the existence of the trees that the people paid for for their plantation. The other topic that I think is quite important in the management of fundraising in FAI, Fondo Ambiente Italiano*, is adoption, *Italian National Trust the idea that people ask to adopt a work of art. Again, we are here in a beautiful example of how the user, the consumer is entering in contract with the work of art itself. If FAI wants to educate, wants to say to the people it's important to preserve and conserve heritage and they ask them this, not only to give money in a general way, but in a specific adoption project. Can you give some examples or some ideas about of what adoption is according to FAI's policy? Well basically every year we run an appeal, a mailing, to our members at the beginning of the year, and we sort of send out appeals to our members saying there are many objects, for example furniture or paintings or flower beds or gardens or rooms, entire rooms that are waiting to be adopted, and that means taking care of forever. Some of these adoptions, some of these restoration works are more urgent, some others are less urgent but we finally are able to match all the needs. We found that people are very interested and very eager to adopt a restoration work, a restoration in a property, so that their name would be remembered forever for future generations and sometimes people adopt a room or an object in memory of a dear loved who maybe is not there anymore. So… this is an example that comes also from American tradition? Yeah, absolutely. What is important in FAI is the fact that it is a pioneer in the Italian system in the use of the adoption system on fundraising. So it's quite common if we go abroad in the US or in Great Britain to find rooms entitled to people that are still alive or in memory of somebody that is not here anymore, but this approach in Italy was in a way pioneered by FAI and you are still going on with this activity. Yes we tend to do this at the beginning of the restoration project for example, before opening up a property so that single rooms are, in fact, adopted. Or we may continue, during the life of the property because it's a very good method of fundraising for us. Now the importance of the network, we know how important building a network is in each organization and mainly in cultural institutions because through the word of mouth, through the reputation, the value conveyed to the consumer and the user is increasing. How does FAI build up a network not only in Italy but all over the world? We do have an international approach in fact, because, being Italy the country with the highest number of UNESCO sites, We realized that actually the millions of visitors who come to Italy every year love Italy, love Italian art, and love Italian landscape; and the we saw in fact, we saw an opportunity there. Back in 2001, an organization, a foundation in New York was set up in order help FAI raise funds for our restoration project and since then we've formed three other groups of support: FAI Swiss, FAI France, and FAI UK. They all help with the fundraising projects. Now to give you a concrete example, last year in 2015, friends of FAI traveled to Italy, they came to the Milan area and of course is the good excuse was Milano Expo 2015. They came and visited some of FAI's properties and they came to Villa Panza where we held a lunch for them with Mrs. Panza. We were able to show them our need to expand the temporary exhibition spaces because we had some important donations and new works that were donated to FAI actually. The villa lacked a temporary exhibition space, and so they adopted that project and they were able to raise with an appeal. They were able to help us with a very important donation of over $500,000. Thank you Alessandra Varisco, FAI International Manager. You're welcome.