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About the Foundation |
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The public sector in Denmark takes care of pensions, health insurance, nurseries, public schools, universities, social welfare offices, development aid... It has offices for plant species authenticity, fishery control, adoption matters, and much much more. Many Danes receive their salaries or pensions from the public sector, and this group makes up a large percentage of the workforce. Denmark is known around the world for its social security net and its welfare systems, in which the state often plays a decisive role. The well-developed and significant Danish state is not a new undertaking. One royal lineage has for more than a thousand years stood as the head of the Danes, a record worthy of the Guinness Book of Records. The Danish state has been of varying strength throughout the centuries. But it took a large step forward in 1660. In the crisis following the ignominious defeat to the Swedes, the Danish king took the power from the country’s nobility. Absolute monarchy was introduced. The Danish monarchy took the opportunity to streamline and organize the country in a modern way. It resulted in one legal system and national planning. The Danish monarchy became of such a solid nature that it survived even the free constitution in 1849. Some of the societal contradictions where sharpened with the new industries and the new working class of the 1800’s. The poorest saw the state as one of the ways to increased social security and justice. In the 20th century sharp ideological contradictions confronted each other concerning the role of the public sector. Both the Soviet communism and the European fascist regimes saw the state as the omnipresent and dominating authority in the lives of the society and the people. In contrast to these societal models stood the American free enterprise system, in which the state and its bodies played a much smaller role. The Scandinavian welfare model came to represent a third way between these two poles. During the century the totalitarian states failed. The Danish state, however, went unharmed through the century. Yes, actually considerably strengthened. Year by year the number of new laws and regulations increase, which in most cases dictate restrictions and regulations of the citizens’ conduct. In cases where the state has attempted de-bureaucratization and less control, the end result has almost always been more control from new authorities. Nonetheless, there also exists a strong "private" Denmark - the country’s large and small businesses, associations and other private organizations - including the foundations. A foundation can be either charitable or simply commercial, if it does not have a particularly beneficent objective. Something being a foundation only says something about how this enterprise is organized, purely juridically. A foundation has a set of statutes and a board of directors which shall act in accordance with the objectives of the statutes. It is the board, and not the public sector, which decides what the foundation shall do. Herein lies the private nature of the foundation. The fact that the foundation is a nonpublic organization, that is non-state, non-municipal, can be read in 'Fondsloven' [the Foundation Legislation] of March 23, 1992. § 1, art. 2, no. 7 simply says:
This means that THE STATE DOES NOT DECIDE over a foundation. Because it is private. The state has laid down some rules for how one as a private foundation must behave, and within these rules the private, in this case in the form of a foundation, has the right to express itself freely. This means that it is the private which must define, delimit and motivate - in consideration of the prevailing law. This means that the public can NOT dictate the board of a foundation what it should use its means for. The public can only delimit the framework, within which the application has to take place. If the board then keeps within the limits of the direction, defined by the law, the board has done its job. The Foundation for General Purposes - The Foundation’s
Forerunner When some from the Teacher Group founded ‘Fonden til Almene Formål’ [The Foundation for General Purposes] in 1982, they committed themselves to give 80% of their salaries as a gift to this foundation for the next 10 years. This could be done, since these people did not have a large private consumption. However, the big donations to the Foundation for General Purposes caused the Foundation Legislation to be changed in 1985, so that it was no longer possible to achieve tax exemption for an arbitrarily large part of one’s income, but for a maximum of 15% only. In addition, the gift could only be given to foundations which supported humanitarian objectives, protection of the environment, and research. The Foundation for General Purposes was discontinued, and a new foundation was created which lived up to the demands of the new law. The Foundation is established Two people, Rikke Viholm and Tove Birkø, founded The Foundation and paid the original capital of a total of 200,000 DKr. The deed of foundation was signed by the founders in February 1987 and has been valid more or less unchanged ever since. On the day of foundation, the founders selected the board of directors of the new foundation. They were eight persons, whom the founders new well, and whom they trusted to uphold the interests of the Foundation in an energetic and selfless manner within the frames of the deed of foundation and its broadly formulated objectives. The first board of directors consisted of: The board of directors assembled for their first meeting on April 29, 1987 - shortly after the Foundation Registry had approved the Foundation.
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