The Dioguardi Foundation is a non-profit organisation, created by Gianfranco Dioguardi in 1991, to honour the memory of his parents, Maria Blasutigh and Saverio Dioguardi, juridically acknowledged with a Decree by the Ministry of Interior (15th May 1993).

The Dioguardi Foundation has a Board of Directors that includes experts who have to plan, organise and carry out cultural programmes in line with its institutional mandate.

The Foundation promotes the cooperation between universities, institutions and the world of enterprises to facilitate the natural experimentation of scientific and entrepreneurial research.

Thanks to its Library (more than 40,000 books) it has set up a fertile cooperation with students and teachers of the Bari Polytechnic and the Bari University, developing research activities that go hand in hand with those specifically carried out by the University itself.

The Foundation promotes the publication of books, scientific articles, researches worthy of notice. It steers cultural initiatives towards the promotion of conferences, meetings and debates on the topic of economy and organisation, on management in general and on topics of “miscellaneous culture”.

In 2021, the Dioguardi Foundation has set up with ANCI Nazionale (the National Association of City Mayors), the Bari University and the Ca’ Foscari Venice University, the SUM City School Consortium – School of Urban Management. Chaired by Gianfranco Dioguardi, creator and promoter of the City School model, the Consortium stems from the desire to create new training courses inspired by Business Schools for manufacturing enterprises, to stimulate the elaboration of new organisation theories that shall prepare and train new professional and administrative roles, capable of facing the challenges of urban complexity and to help govern the cities of the third Millennium.