Research into the international development sector and its effectiveness by the H & D Davidson Trust points to a flawed system badly in need of reform. In this series of interviews, we talk to figures in the sector in order to get their views on how we can co-create the narrative of the system we want and how we obtain it. In this interview, Andrew Milner talks to Andre Wilkens of the European Cultural Foundation.

‘If you come with combined funds, with real money on the table then things become more possible.’

Andrew Milner: To set the scene, can you tell me what European Cultural Foundation does and what its purpose is?

Andre Wilkens:  I would say it is the first European foundation in the sense that it was the first foundation set up for Europe, a foundation serving Europe. It was set up in 1954 with a mission to grow a sense of belonging among Europeans and that remains true. There’s one project probably most people know in Europe that the European Cultural Foundation had a stake in developing and that is the Erasmus programme, so that’s our unicorn.

What problems or challenges do you see your work as responding to at the Cultural Foundation?

It was very much created in the 50s of the time when Europe was coming out of two terrible world wars and a bunch of people got together and said we wish to find a way out of this. Some of it is through economics and economic co-operation, but we have to find another way so that the people stop hating each other and work together in some sort of harmony and using what we actually have in terms of joint cultural heritage. It’s not all national and regional, there’s also something which binds us together. How do you do that in a way that is not just a one-off big conference but over the long term? How do you help to make Europe a place of peace, co-operation, solidarity through culture and education?

Has that changed over time now we’re in the 21st century? Do you see it responding to the same problems?

Well, the foundation has responded in different ways over the decades but there was a big change after the Berlin Wall came down and there was a lot of focus on how East and West could be brought together, mainly through exchange but also media and institution building. So, the foundation got a lot more adventurous, trying out different things, working with different players in civil society and academia and media. We’re still in this phase, but we’re more focussed on really making an impact, and not only sowing the seeds of something but also trying to go the whole way from researching and initiating it to bringing partners together to actually see it happening. Growing a European sentiment is not a short-term thing.

Could you tell me specifically about some of the approaches you use, some of the programmes you’ve run, the nuts and bolts of them?

One programme I’m very excited about is our library programme. As with Erasmus where the infrastructure is the universities and you ‘only’ needed to fund and support the connection, we looked for something with a similar infrastructure and we discovered the libraries. There are 65,000 public libraries in Europe and if you could connect them you’d actually have a real European social network. So we invested in it.  We used a challenge approach where we looked for something common, that could be replicated across Europe. It could be democracy, digital literacy, climate change, saving the bees in Barcelona. Is it through agricultural things? Is it through community building and mental health? Those are a particular focus in the UK. These issues are then shared across libraries so we are trying to address this sense of community among Europeans through a practical approach. We are not preaching to them, we asked them decide – what is the issue you are working on, let’s bring this to the attention of a growing network of libraries and their communities. And the great thing about libraries is you have the infrastructure, you have the people. We actually have a lot that we can bring to the table, and so I believe it has a great future. So that’s one example, but we are also working on the digital public space and media, We support a network of independent media players to create a platform where they build something on basis of open source technology and European software solutions which could be scalable.  We have also  created the Culture of Solidarity Fund which developed out of the pandemic, when we felt we needed to react quickly, which is a very flexible tool to apply to emerging issues. Initially. we called it the vision fund. We set ten per cent of our budget aside in 2019 to react to things which we had not foreseen but were relevant. When Covid hit, we had a tool we could apply flexibly, fast and with cross-border co-operation and later to the question of a just transition related to climate change. We will keep that because I think you need this sort of flexibility.

Which of your initiatives do you see as being the most successful and why do you think they’ve taken off in the way they have?

Our unicorn is Erasmus student exchange which creates a European sense of belonging for millions of Europeans. It was created through a unique public-philanthropic partnership. It has so many interesting learnings on how to develop an initiative, to find a partner who has something you don’t have yourself, and you need a little bit of luck, or maybe the right timing. You also need to find a niche which may be a niche at the beginning and people laugh at you and say ‘why are you doing a student exchange, everyone is doing it?’ But if you apply it in the right way on a really big scale, then something can happen. And as I’ve mentioned the library programme is very close to my heart because I see some of the same elements in it. Whether it will have a real impact we will see in the next few years, but I believe so.

In Europe after the war, we created the coal and steel community, the European Union, Central Bank, the Euro, and even the Champions League and Eurovision, so why shouldn’t philanthropy catch up sometime?

For something like Erasmus, what do you see as the key ingredients? Is that the fact it’s done on a big scale and that it’s a public philanthropy partnership?

These are two, and then one I mentioned before. Erasmus doesn’t support the universities, it runs on the infrastructure of the universities so you have to find something which is there, which is funded and you create a little element on top, or something which connects these things. That was the winning ingredient. Out of that, other things develop because once you start with a student exchange you realise you have to work on harmonisation of university degrees to some extent because otherwise the student gets no credits in their own country. So lots of stuff came out of it, even in terms of general university co-operation. Maybe another important ingredient is simplicity.  It’s not rocket science. It is taking something really simple and scaling it.

Going back to your general work of creating a spirit of European-ness,  what are the main kind of challenges to that happening?

It’s a very difficult job. It’s also a great job. I’m a European, I believe in this idea, I come from, originally from East Germany, so I experienced a different  system so I think I can appreciate Europe in a different way than others who’ve grown up and seen this relative European peace and prosperity as normal. But it is difficult.  Our foundation is 70 years old, but you hardly have any other foundations to serve the European common good. 99.9 per cent of all foundations in Europe work on national, local or regional issues,  That is a real challenge and I sometimes say that in a way philanthropy still lives in the 19th century. Foundations are still basically national, and I think that’s why philanthropy doesn’t really play a role when it comes to European developments. There are a few think-tanks supported by philanthropy, but the big players are the governments and some transnational NGOs. Just imagine in America if all the foundations were only organised at local level and there was nothing happening at the pan-US level. We would find this rather bizarre, but in Europe we don’t find it bizarre. We need to develop a philanthropy for Europe which goes far beyond the European Cultural Foundation. It could be in different fields, whether it’s democracy and environment or whatever. In order to make this happen, I took inspiration from one of our founding fathers, Robert Schuman. His famous Schuman Plan established the European sharing economy of coal and steel which later became the European Union. So, I wrote the New Schuman Plan which suggests that foundations in Europe should create a European sharing philanthropy. Just as the Schuman Plan created a better Europe through sharing political goals and economic resources, so does the New Schuman Plan aim to build a better Europe through sharing philanthropic purpose and resources.

The goals of such an initiative are threefold: First, to mobilise resources through aligning, pooling and sharing resources. Second, to empower civil society organisations that advocate for the European common good, focusing on social and democratic achievements. Third, to invest in projects that foster a sense of belonging and solidarity among Europeans, enhancing the social fabric of the continent.

Such an initiative will substantially increase the European philanthropy ecosystem and create a European mechanism to address the fundamental European challenges collectively, leveraging resources and influence of the participating foundations and the EU. This initiative aims to foster a new philanthropic culture of impact, sharing and cooperation on a pan-European level. Participating foundations pledge to invest a minimum of 1 per cent of their annual budget to the Share Europe Initiative through shared, aligned and/or pooled funding.

Going back to the absence of European scope to most foundations’ work, is that a regulatory thing do you think, or is it just the habit that foundations don’t tend to work together or don’t have a European outlook?

I think it’s both. We were created 70 years ago with a European mission, a transnational board and transnational staff. We are registered in the Netherlands but we work and fund across 50 countries across Europe. What would of course be better would be to have a transnational European foundation statute which also provides tax benefits across the whole of Europe and which makes donations to foundations easier but I’d be cautious about saying that once we have this European foundation statute, you will see all these European foundations emerging. It is a mindset and I don’t have clue why there are not more European foundations like ours.

The Reforming International Development Initiative which has commissioned these interviews has come up with four pathways to better funding practice; equal voice for local communities in decision-making, increased collaboration partnership, unrestricted and longer-term funding, and the changing roles of INGOs from being government-led to being led by local circumstances. Are you consciously taking those sorts of approach and, if so, how?

This whole element of partnerships is ingrained in what we do, that’s the key element. Our last five years’ strategy and the current strategy process we did through a consultation process where we did a European tour. We do workshops in different European countries and ask people: what are the challenges in Europe? What can culture do? What can philanthropy do and what can we do together? That is the basis for our strategy development. Probably some people would say it’s not the most scientific approach, but it is a listening exercise, it’s not just sitting in Amsterdam and looking at a few graphs and then saying, okay, that’s what we do. The Europe challenge with the libraries is another example. We’re not saying: ‘we think you should be doing that’, but: ‘you define what you want to do, we will provide you with the funding and we provide you with a network to share your experience across Europe.’ That is also long-term funding. We are one of the biggest foundations for European purpose, but we are very small. We have a budget between eight and nine million per year, so while we provide long-term funding for programmes, it’s a bit tricky to provide long-term funding to individual grantees. We are very clear that we have a mission for European identity, we say what are the areas in which we will work and we will provide funding at least for a five-year period.. We can’t say, like some foundations, we will fund a grantee for 10 years after a long selection process. In our case it wouldn’t make sense. So you have to see that also in the context of what kind of foundation you are.

If you come with combined funds, with real money on the table then things become more possible

You talked about the libraries programme as an instance of where you let the individual libraries decide what they what you want to do with the programme. Is that a common strategy now in the Cultural Foundation?

Often after  talks involving lots of people,  we come up with an iterative approach. Let’s take another example, the digital and the media. The original idea wasn’t ours, our contribution was to  start to develop a network or platform which is built on open source software and which would be an aggregator for news simultaneously translated in 15 languages. This is a consortium of 17 actors from different countries, and ECF is basically the key interlocker and also brings in external funding, in this case, from the EU. For us, bringing in the voices of the local community  has been quite natural in the design process. Our approach is, if there’s a good idea, wherever it comes from, let’s help and do it.

Is there a mechanism which formalises this consultative approach,  or does that just happen?

I wouldn’t say we have a European Cultural Foundation template, but maybe we should, it’s a good idea. Maybe now we’ll develop one. But, as I said, we have this listening tour  which is now an integral part of our strategy process and for every big programme development, we’d take some time to devise different iterations, like with the libraries programme. We also have a programme called the European Pavilion which was developed with a bunch of curators, so I would say yes, our programmes develop organically, but maybe not according to a predefined scheme.

When people hear the word culture,  they immediately think of what people call high culture. Are you sometimes seen as being elitist with the label of Cultural Foundation?

Erasmus was very much an educational programme and we’ve been working in the media programme and the digital field for 20 years so our definition of culture is very wide. Maybe f you call yourself an arts foundation, there’s a danger that people say, that’s very elitist; art, museums and stuff. Culture not so much. Though we’ve been thinking whether the label European Cultural Foundation is the right description for us. Probably, if we were to recreate it, it would just be called the Europe Foundation because we are working much broader than the cultural field.

There could be much more co-operation between the philanthropic sector and the private sector

Obviously there are communities across Europe of people whose origins are outside Europe. What response do you get from them? Do they see European culture as not being their culture?

That’s not been a problem, partly because we’ve also been working in the field of migration and we still have a programme on migrants in the media, giving voice to migrants themselves because although they’re often in the media, their actual voice is underrepresented. So we funded also a network of migrant journalists in established and new media. There is sometimes the question: what is European?  Do you mean the European Union? Do you mean only someone born in Europe?  We say for us, Europe is not just the European Union, but at least those countries within the borders of the Council of Europe, which  is over 50 countries and we work as much as we can in all of them and also include people who are not citizens of these countries but who are a part of this European space. In their different ways, migrants are part of Europe and contribute to Europe.

What kind of results has the migrant journalist programme had?

We supported many migrant journalists and provided toolkits, or helped them design  toolkits, and helped bring them together and share experience between migrant journalists in France, Spain, Serbia, in Germany and in the Netherlands. We support them to produce joint work including magazines, websites and so on.

What conditions need to be in place or what support do you need to make your work more effective? I’m thinking about not just from philanthropy, but from the public and private sectors. Are there some missing ingredients that would make your work easier and more effective?

What would make my work easier and more effective would be a greater appreciation and understanding that European co-operation and joint action is important and needed, but also that it is possible and it’s worth investing in it, even if initially it’s more difficult because of language barriers and because you have to transfer money from one country to another, but it’s worth it. It would make it easier if there were more people who feel this European co-operation in philanthropy is worth the time and investment.

So the transnational approach would be the biggest single change you think that would be effective from your point of view?

I’ll just give you an example, Taking the figures from Philea, foundations in Europe, spend per annum around 55 to 60 billion Euros. If foundations would only spend one per cent on European co-operation, that would be to 550 to 600 million euros. With that amount you can already make a difference, you can already be a player. If you go to the EU with an amount  like three and a half million per year to save democracy, you’re not taken seriously. But if you come with combined funds, with real money on the table then things become more possible. You can see that in the US, often on big issues foundations get together and get moving relatively quickly. For example, US foundations who work on media independence created this Press Forward fund with 500 million in a relatively short time, so I wish that we had the courage and ambition to do that in Europe. Certainly the funds are there, I think it’s a mindset.  In Europe after the war, we created the coal and steel community, the European Union, Central Bank, the Euro, and even the Champions League and Eurovision, so why shouldn’t philanthropy catch up sometime?

There was a move several years ago for a European Foundation statute which in the end wasn’t taken up. Do you think that’s because there isn’t enough political will for that to happen at the moment?

Maybe there could have been more drive behind it. But in the end I think it also failed because of financial issues, because of the need to look at tax incentives in different countries. I think now the environment is different. People are looking at tax regimes in different countries to avoid tax evasion. Maybe you can flip that and look at the tax regime in Europe in a way that encourages good practice in terms of encouraging philanthropic spending.

Do you see scope for greater collaboration between the philanthropic and the public sector and private sectors? Is that going to make more money available or produce better outcomes. given that governments are the most powerful force when it comes to public welfare?

I see a big potential. Again the Erasmus example which was a great example of public philanthropic-partnership as far back as the 1980s. If you are serious and you bring scale to it, then it’s possible. But if every individual foundation goes to the EU, it’s just not possible. You can count the names of the foundations in Europe who will get a meeting with the European Commission president these days. If we create more relevance at European level you can have that discussion on a more serious and larger scale.

Is there also scope for collaboration between the philanthropic and the private sectors or is the private sector always going to pursue its own interests?

I hope so, but from my own experience, I’ll believe it when I see it. For example on the issue of sustainability, there could be much more co-operation between the philanthropic sector and the private sector. You could, for instance, get all the rail companies to launch a campaign to get people from the air on to the trains again.  A lot of private companies have set up their own foundations, especially in German – you have the Volkswagen Foundation and you have the Allianz Foundation and so on. Is there more scope beyond that? I wish, but I have not really seen it yet.

Andrew Milner is features editor at Alliance magazine