Work · 01 of 7

Banco Alimentare × Milano Cortina

A fundraising and awareness partnership for Italy's food bank, built around the Milano Cortina Winter Games.

ClientBanco Alimentare
My roleResearcher, strategist & pitch lead
Year2025
ContextTeam of six · Master in Strategic Design, Politecnico di Milano
Campaign title slide with the Milano Cortina and Banco Alimentare logos: "Be the champion they need"
01The brief

Banco Alimentare rescues food that would otherwise be thrown away and gets it to people who need it, run by a large, committed volunteer network. The brief: propose a strategic communication partnership that raises funds and builds awareness.

We explored three partnership routes: Coursera for volunteer training and education, Nexi for round-up donations at checkout, and the Milano Cortina Winter Games for physical, international visibility.

02The insight

People think food-bank food is poor quality. Nobody sees how carefully it is sorted.

  1. The volunteer community is strong and builds the work into daily life, but training new volunteers takes time.
  2. A huge amount of food would be wasted without food banks, and the work never stops.
  3. The question became: how might we help Banco Alimentare reach a huge number of people, attracting donors and building awareness at the same time?
03The concept

"Athletes have coaches, communities have Banco Alimentare." The Games were the starting point; the long-term goal is a partnership model with sports associations that can be repeated across events.

  1. Go for Gold: a physical and online game based on Banco Alimentare's real food-sorting process. Players sort items on a speeding conveyor in 40 seconds: edible and safe, damaged but edible, or expired.
  2. A flagship merch store in Piazza del Duomo with the physical game, plus kiosks across the sport villages.
  3. Merchandise, social filters and an artist installation to keep the message travelling after the event.
  4. Nexi as payment partner, testing round-up donations in the merch stores, and Coursera courses to make volunteering easier to start.
Five insights from the research, from perception to training
The system: product, experience and promotion
Go for Gold, the sorting game
How the game works: 40 seconds, one point per correct sort
The flagship store in front of the Duomo
Merchandise designed to keep the message alive
Social activations and filters
The journey from awareness to retention
04The outcome

Pitched to Banco Alimentare. Milano Cortina was too close to act on, so they took the overall strategy and began applying it to their future campaigns, starting with an upcoming event of their own.

Forecast in the pitch, not a result
  • €1–2MFundraising forecast in the pitch, including future scale-up
  • 250,000+Meals funded, forecast in the pitch