Reform of the Third Sector: notes on the new discipline of "fundraising"

According to the provisions of art. 7 of Legislative Decree no. 117/2017, which for the first time provided a regulatory definition to the concept of "fundraising", all initiatives aimed at financing the activities of general interest of Third Sector entities are considered as such. These also include those carried out in an "organized and continuous" form, provided that they are carried out in compliance with the principles of truth, transparency and fairness in the relations between supporters and the public, regardless of the operating methods used.

In the second paragraph of the same article it was also anticipated that the Ministry of Labor will adopt guidelines on the point, however, to date the only legislative guideline regarding the methods of management and organization of fundraising activities remains the one envisaged from the former Agenzia per le Onlus, updated to 2011.

The fourth paragraph, letter a), of the art. 79 of the Code has established that income deriving from occasional fundraising does not contribute to the formation of the income of Third Sector Entities; these therefore have no relevance even from a fiscal point of view. However, in paragraph 5-bis, introduced with the corrective pursuant to Legislative Decree no. 105/2018, it is expected that while the contributions, subsidies, donations, membership fees of the institution and all other income similar to these (including those deriving from the so-called "street events") are revenues from activities "non-commercial", all the proceeds deriving from organized and continuous fundraising, such as to satisfy the requisites to be productive of business income, remain instead of a commercial nature, and must therefore be taxed according to the ordinary methods.

We also recall that it has been envisaged that all the sums deriving from fundraising must be indicated in the cash report inserted in free form in the financial statements of the institutions, financial statements which, once the RUNTS is operational, by 30 June of each year will be this deposited.