Territorial Development and Innovation Paths in Social Services Offered by Non profit Organizations

This article presents some results of the IV survey «Social services provided by non-profit organizations» carried out by INAPP with the CAWI technique in 2021 and referring to 2020 framework. This is a national sample survey designed to shed light on a strategic sector of the welfare system not well known in its specific aspects and only marginally explored by scholars and policy makers despite the growing interest shown in recent years on such an issue.The objective of the study is to provide a unitary information framework of a statistical nature, accurate and articulated, on a double object of investigation or, better said, on the poaint of intersection and combination of two elements, usually investigated separately: social services and non-profit organizations engaged in the implementation of these services. The analysis unit is made up of the bodies corresponding to the wide variety of organizational typologies typical of the third sector − social enterprises (and cooperatives), voluntary organizations, social promotion associations, philanthropic bodies, associative networks, mutual aid companies, other third sector entities.Through the data collected, a comprehensive picture of the extents and peculiar characteristics of non-profit providers of social services is rebuilt in the belief that the empirical evidence can help to better understand a crucial nexus of the welfare state, to grasp its strengths, weaknesses and falls, beyond partial and stereotyped representations, misunderstandings, and rhetorical accounts. The time span of the survey, which has been crossing processes and events of great impact for the segment examined – pandemic crisis in full swing, reform of the Third sector in the process of being completed, interest of policies towards social services – makes the work still more useful for a clearer definition of both the evolutionary trajectories of the third sector and of the risks of welfare involution.The results of the survey show a sharp increase in social service providers in the South which highlights, however, an «incomplete» growth relating only to the number of providers and not to the increase in human resources (paid and voluntary). The negative effects of Covid have mainly affected the contribution of volunteers while paid work keeps pace, which is able to guarantee generally acceptable operating conditions for institutions. In this sense, the pandemic may have accelerated the slow and difficult path towards the structural professionalization of social services also underlying the reform of the sector.