Financial Transparency for 2018
Sep 04, 2020
What type of funding system does the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung have?
In order to ensure the independence of our content, as well as to provide our work with a stabile institutional framework, we decided on a mixed financial model funded by as many different donors as possible. In 2018 94 percent of our total budget was comprised of subsidies from non-profit foundations and public institutions, whereas 6 percent of our budget was funded by corporate donations. As a rule, no single corporate donor is allowed to contribute more than 5 percent of the total budget of our organization. Because the SNV primarily obtains funding for specific projects, the majority of which are limited to a time period of 1 to 3 years, our funding structure is continuously changing.
Who finances us with what types of contributions, and how do we use that money?
In the fiscal year 2018, 1.33 million Euros was made available for our work. As of the end of 2018, 19 non-profit, public and private sector donors supported our work. The five largest sponsors in 2018 were Luminate, the Open Society Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Bertelsmann Stiftung. Stiftung Mercator is supporting our work in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and Foreign Policy together with the German Foreign Ministry. The following tables list all of SNV's donors and the amount of their financing, as well as their respective share of our total budget.
Financial Resources from Foundations, Public Institutions and Non-profit Organizations (2018)
Institution | Application of Resources | Amount in 2018 | Percent of Total Budget (2018) |
Federal Foreign Office |
AI & Foreign Policy |
56,634 € |
4 % |
Bertelsmann Foundation | The Common Good and Digitisation |
95,399 € |
7 % |
BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt |
institutional |
2,000 € |
<1 % |
Datev Stiftung Zukunft | institutional |
60,000 € |
5 % |
Expertenkommission Forschung und Innovation (EFI) |
Digital Energy Transition |
21,970 € |
2 % |
Evonik Foundation |
institutional |
50,000€ |
4 % |
The European Union represented by European Commission | International Cybersecurity Policy |
66,872 € |
5 % |
Haleakala Foundation | Digital Energy Transition |
30,000 € |
2 % |
Heinrich-Böll Stiftung e.V. |
Digital Basic Rights, Surveillance and Transparency |
31,723 € |
2 % |
Luminate Part of the Omidyar Group |
Data Economy, |
337,719 € |
25 % |
Open Society Foundation |
Digital Rights, Surveillance and Democracy institutional |
107,750 € |
8 % |
Robert Bosch Foundation GmbH |
International Cybersecurity Policy Digitisation and the Common Good |
138,705 € |
10 % |
Mercator Foundation GmbH |
Strengthening the Digital Public Sphere Artificial Intelligence & Foreign Policy |
82,596 € |
6 % |
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation |
Strengthening the Digital Public Sphere International Cybersecurity Policy |
142,561 € |
11 % |
Total donations from foundations and public institutions |
1,245,509 € |
85 % des Gesamtbudgets in 2018 |
Corporate Donations
Institution | Application of Resources | Amount in 2018 | Percent of Total Budget (2018) |
Beisheim Holding | institutional | 0.00 €* | 0 % |
Hewlett-Packard Deutschland GmbH | institutional | 20,000 € | 2 % |
LANXESS AG | institutional | 50,000 € | 4 % |
PricewaterhouseCoopers GmbH |
institutional | 10,000 € | <1 % |
Total corporate donations |
249,750 € | 15 % of total budget in 2019 |
* Granted use of premises by Immago AG
All amounts are based on our certified end-of-year financial report for 2018 and are updated annually. For further questions regarding our financing structure, please contact our finance team.
In 2019, we were able to gain amon others the Reiner Lemoine Stiftung, Bündnis Bürgerenergie, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Media Authority of Berlin-Brandenburg and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as additional sponsors for the following funding period, thus expanding our range of supporters.
Content Independence & Fundraising
Our organization strictly practices content independence. Independence means that our donors are not allowed to determine which topics we choose, how our experts work, which proposals they make in their papers, or the positions they take in public debates. Financial support does not facilitate content or any other form of influence.
Independence from political or business interests is one of the most important fundaments of our daily work. In order to develop ideas, our staff continuously relies on the support of an array of leading experts from the fields of research, politics, civil society and economics. We only receive this support by remaining a location where no one point of view dominates, but rather where a problem is addressed from various perspectives without outside demands.
We finance our work by appealing to foundations, public or non-profit organizations for the resources needed to investigate a specific topic. We encounter new topics and questions through our daily work on existing projects, or through exchanges with other experts from the fields of science, business, civil society and administration. The development of concrete proposals for how a societal problem can be solved always goes hand in hand with our funded projects.
Aside from foundations and ministries, we are always looking for support from the private sector. To preserve our independence, we ask corporations for donations that finance our organization as a whole. Funding a specific topic or project is not possible for corporations.