After months of hard work it’s done! The Guerrilla Foundation has now officially launched. Actually, we should say Good Move gGmbH has launched with Guerrilla Foundation being its brand. Confusing? Read more about our naming struggles soon.
In this ‘News’ section of our blog, we will provide regular updates about how the Guerrilla Foundation develops and grows and what we learn along the way. Next to that, the ‘Opinion’ section has its first post by Antonis who outlines his thoughts about progressive philanthropy and impact investing.
What have we achieved in the past months?
- We are telling the story of Antonis’ past grant giving in the areas of political activism, social entrepreneurship and refugee aid through our shiny new website (credits to Interweave). All of the grants you see in our Grantees section are Antonis’ private donations of the last 2-3 years.
- Until the end of 2016 we will select a handful of additional grantees in these fields and are about to launch our closed call for applications.
- We defined our new strategic direction. From January 2017 on we will focus on activism and advocacy only. Special thanks to the participants of the EDGE summer retreat in La Bergerie and the EDGE meeting in Budapest for your valuable feedback! Stay tuned for more details towards the end of the year and an update of our website.
What did we learn?
- When it comes to building your theory of change, it’s ok to not know it all! Engage in a strategic search process, know which data points you want to gather and what questions you want to pose that will help you to adjust your assumptions about your issue and the field. Take it from there and enjoy the ride!
- A gGmbH (charitable company) is the most flexible and easy to set up legal form for running a foundation in Germany – especially if you are not 100% sure yet about your strategic focus. What about being really guerrilla and not having a legal form at all? We considered that, too. But it’s not a smart idea if you want to benefit from memberships and collaborations with other organizations. Which leads us to the last point:
- Pick your battles – and there will be many, especially if you chose a controversial name
We want to thank all of you who helped us with foundation strategy, thoughts on impact, as well as admin and legal questions! Without your support we wouldn’t be half as far as we are today! We also know that there’s still a long way to go and look forward to your feedback and thoughts as we continue our journey.
Special thanks go to the small crowd of committed people who came to our launch workshop on 13th September! It was great to see you and (once more) get your input! We are honored by your commitment and got a lot of good ideas for our 2017 activities.
I am sure that this was not the last time that we gathered an exciting circle of people to think about our next Guerrilla moves and changing the world in general!
