Shell Foundation

Shell Foundation is an independent UK registered charity established by the Shell Group in 2000 to create and scale new solutions to global development challenges that are sustainable and generate large-scale impact. The Shell Foundation applies business thinking to major social and environmental issues linked with the energy sector.

The Foundation works with a small number of entrepreneurial partners to identify the market failures that underpin many of the world's problems and co-create new social enterprises to solve them. The Foundation provides patient grant funding, extensive business support, and access to networks which helps pioneers validate new models, achieve financial independence and expand across geographies.

Shell Foundation is a venture philanthropy group, funding enterprise-based models as a cost effective way to support inclusive economic development.

Shell Foundation was established in 2000 with an endowment to cover annual operating expenditure and ensure long-term financial independence. The Shell Group has also made additional donations on an annual basis since inception. The Foundation has also received additional unrestricted and restricted donations from public and private partners to help them further their charitable objectives.

Shell Foundation is registered with the UK Charity Commission. The governance structure includes a mixed Board of Trustees who oversees their work, including two senior leaders from the Shell Group and four leading figures from sectors related to international development.

The Foundation has its own set of Business Principles that encompasses their values, governs how they conduct their mission, and hold their staff and strategic partners accountable to it.

The Foundation maintains an independent yet linked relationship with their corporate founder which enables them to draw on specific technical and functional expertise, business tools and local networks where appropriate, in order to enhance their ability to achieve lasting public benefit at scale.

Shell Foundation’s activities focus on catalysing market-based solutions to tackle global development challenges in ways that can deliver global impact and can become financially independent. This is done by firstly identifying the market failures that underpin major social and environmental problems and then co-creating new social enterprises and independent enablers to solve them. Shell Foundation also deploys a range of financial and non-financial support to demonstrate these models can work on a global scale and unlock private capital to fund growth and replication, and create enablers and the infrastructure needed to accelerate growth and replication.

...
Wikipedia