FAQ
What is the difference between Skat and the Skat Foundation?
Skat is a private company. The shares are in the hands of Skat employees, Swiss development organizations, as well as, friends of the Skat.
The Skat Foundation is a non-profit organisation which was established by Skat in collaboration with the Swiss NGOs Caritas, Helvetas and Swisscontact in 2002. Skat is represented in the board of the Skat Foundation, bears the complete administrative costs of the Skat Foundation, and provides it with an employee and a managing director.
Why a Skat Foundation?
Skat wants to be recognized as an ecologically and socially responsible organisation. Skat has established the Skat Foundation because the knowledge and experience that it has accumulated over the years should be made accessible to the public at large. And this has, in part, been achieved by making publications available, as well as, free downloads over the Internet.
In addition, Skat wants to actively support efforts towards effective knowledge and experience sharing in development cooperation, which it considers indispensable for sustainable development.
Lastly, Skat would like to counter the increasingly competitive mentality seen among organisations involved in development cooperation and set an example by fostering cooperation.
What guarantees operational transparency between the two organisations?
Skat and the Skat Foundation are juristically two separate organisations and have each their own discrete bookkeeping. The Skat Foundation, subject to the oversight of the Swiss Federal Supervisory Board for Foundations, provides the public with cash flow specifics in annual reports.
The Skat Foundation is presided over by an independent foundation board, which in its advisory function attends to and monitors its affairs. Sitting on the foundation’s board are personalities from development cooperation, business, politics and research. Skat is represented by the managing director and the president of the board.
Skat’s, as well as, Skat Foundation’s finances are examined and reviewed yearly by a independent accounting firm.
Skat is a corporation. What happens to the profits?
Juristically, Skat is a corporation. The shares are in the hands of Skat employees, Swiss development organizations, as well as, friends of the Skat. Profits are paid out in the form of modest dividends to stockholders as a remuneration for their provision of capital.
In addition, Skat bears the complete administrative costs of the Skat Foundation and provides it with an employee and a managing director. In this way, funds earmarked for foundation projects can be solely used for that purpose.
Lastly, as its own profitability allows, Skat makes contributions to Skat Foundation projects.
