Our mission is to keep vulnerable families in Bulgaria together. We want a Bulgarian society where children grow up in families and have the support they need to thrive. At present, around 2,000 children enter the care system every year in Bulgaria. We also support advocacy at the European level to influence how EU funding is prioritized and invested in Bulgaria to ensure children can grow up and thrive in families. Swiss Philanthropy Foundation allows us to stay focused on our mission by providing administrative, financial, and human resource support.

We have extensive experience in implementation but managing grants to other organizations is something new for us. We were looking for a partner with the right expertise to make our proposal to the Botnar Foundation stronger. Swiss Philanthropy Foundation has been an excellent partner; they provide an efficient, reliable solution, which allows us to focus on the content, strategy, and operational management of the programme.

Swiss Philanthropy Foundation allows philanthropists to benefit from the structure that you have, the very professional way of managing funds, and the due diligence that you do on grantees. If each of the donor wanted to do that work themselves, it would be hugely time-consuming and with a different level of quality. At Swiss Philanthropy Foundation, you have a great way of making things effective and easy from our side. The donors can be very different, but your system makes it easy for us to manage that. This is really a great advantage for organizations like ours.

I support two organizations in France through Transnational Giving Europe. I donate primarily to the Association pour le Rayonnement de l ‘Opéra de Paris (AROP). I have made a three-year pledge to AROP to fund initiatives that aim to improve the health and working conditions of dancers at the Paris Opera. For example, I helped pay for an on-site psychoanalyst, the purchase of new gym equipment, and a new floor in one of the practice rooms to prevent injuries. Through TGE, I also give to the What Can Dance Do Project, which brings dancers to perform in hospitals. I chose TGE because I needed a way to give abroad while living in Switzerland. Swiss Philanthropy Foundation offers an excellent service through the TGE network. I can rely on the fact that my donations go directly to the projects I have chosen.”

We had been supporting families in need for many years on a modest scale, when a change in our personal circumstances made it possible for us to do so on a much larger scale. We looked into the process of creating a foundation, but, in the end, we decided a personal philanthropic fund was the best option for us from an administrative, legal, and cost standpoint. We chose to set up a fund with Swiss Philanthropy Foundation. Our objective is to help disadvantaged families for a minimum of two years. We communicate regularly with the non-profit organizations we support. We are active in Switzerland, Italy, Somalia, Cambodia, and Tanzania.

We are immensely grateful to the UN Foundation and the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation for coming forward to help us set up this fund. A lot of people and institutions have been saying they want to contribute to the fight against the novel coronavirus. Now they can.