An editorial idea
The Character of Foundations
An independent perspective for foundation boards considering questions of purpose, responsibility and institutional direction.
A foundation is given more than assets, rules and governing bodies. Over time, it develops a character of its own.
That character reveals itself most clearly when there is no easy answer. When different responsibilities meet. When what is legally possible is not necessarily what is right. When the question becomes what an institution owes to itself.
Institutional character
What decisions reveal
Character is rarely found in a mission statement. It shows itself in decisions: in what a board chooses to support and what it declines, in how it weighs the founder's intention against the needs of the present, and in the tensions it is prepared to hold rather than resolve too quickly.
Strategic direction, governance and purpose are often discussed separately. In practice they meet in the same decisions. Looking at them together can make visible the assumptions an institution has stopped questioning and the competing considerations it has learned to live with.
Questions worth asking
What should remain true
- What does the foundation stand for, beyond its stated purpose?
- What do its recent decisions reveal about its priorities?
- Which assumptions have quietly become habits?
- Where do legitimate responsibilities pull in different directions?
- What should remain true as the institution evolves?
Related writing
Beyond the page
Some questions benefit from being considered together.
I occasionally join foundation boards in closed conversations where an independent perspective may add something useful to the room.
Start a conversationBiography
Hanna Byland is a Swiss lawyer, foundation executive and board member. She works with foundation chairs, boards and executives facing consequential decisions, serves on foundation boards and investment committees, and carries executive responsibility for a Swiss entrepreneurship foundation. Her work centres on the decisions through which institutions preserve their purpose, continue to develop and carry responsibility over time.