The Prince & Princess of Asturias attend the Annual Meeting of the Hague Club at IE Business School

The meeting was hosted by the IE (Instituto de Empresa) Foundation and the Príncipe de Asturias Foundation. The 2011 meeting was held in Turin, organized by Compagnia de San Paolo.

Participants in the workshop included Rosa Gallego, deputy director of the Spanish Association of Foundations, with an address on the state of the foundation sector in Spain, and Antonio Garrigues Walker, director of Garrigues law firm, with an analysis of the challenges of a new civil society. Further speakers included Doctor Pedro Alonso, president of the International Center for Medical Research of Barcelona and member of the board of the Manhiça Foundation (Mozambique), who talked about challenges in global health, and Fernando Fernández, professor of economics at IE Business School, who spoke about preparing the transition toward a new economic scenario.

The key objective of the Hague Club is to serve as a forum for the discussion of major issues for foundations that work on an international level, and of the role of philanthropy  in the progress of today’s societies, institutional cooperation, and the exchange of knowledge. The majority of the foundations that form part of the Hague Club are private and independent organizations based in Europe, although some are based in the US, Asia and Australia.

The Hague Club

The Hague Club has its origins in discussions and meetings held in Europe in the 1960s, thanks to the efforts of a group of private foundations from the USA (Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation) and Europe (Max Planck, Thyssen, Adriano Olivetti, Calouste Gulbenkian, Agnelli, Bernard Van Leer and Nuffield, among others).

It was formally established in 1971 during the International Foundations Meeting held in Turin at the behest of the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany), the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation (Italy), the Bernard van Leer Foundation (Netherlands) and the Wellcome Trust (UK). The Club takes its name from the Dutch city in which the preparatory meetings for its creation were held and aims to act as a forum for the discussion of issues relevant to foundations of international scope and of the role of philanthropy in the progress of contemporary societies.