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 
IT-Security in IoT 

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,
Strengthening the Digital Public Sphere

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.