Proximity and Social Innovation: What Is the Link? Insights from the Case of Community Foundations in the Turin Context

The contribution explores the experiences of Community Foundations in Italy, with a specific focus on the Turin case. Community Foundations serve as an emblematic example of how social innovation processes, positioned as the new anti-crisis recipe, emerge from relational proximity among social actors and between these actors and the local territory. Relational proximity, defined as the diversity of specific place-based relationships among local stakeholders that facilitate the production of collective knowledge, must be consciously built and promoted through novel models of local governance grounded in community energies. In this context, how can Community Foundations contribute?