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The modelling of soil‐foundation systems and the evaluation of the foundation compliance functions through a finite/infinite element technique is presented. By means of in situ measurements performed upon heavy machinery foundations, the actual dynamic foundation loading condition is computed. The results obtained are used for redesigning the foundations according to maximum allowable vibration patterns. The procedure clearly shows the advantages of the technique, which leads to efficient designs for all types of foundations.

This case discusses the journey of SELCO Foundation, a Bengaluru based not-for-profit organization. It provides key learning and insights for social transformation and poverty alleviation. With the vision of “creating inclusive development pathways that were socially and environmentally sustainable,” the Foundation fostered and scaled ecosystems for democratization of access to clean energy and sustainable solutions for the marginalized communities. Using decentralized renewable energy (DRE), SELCO’s initiatives had established linkages between SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG4 (Quality Education), SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). Throughout its journey, it continuously challenged normative development paradigms and perceptions about gender issues, poverty, and sustainability as a whole through a people-centric approach; empowering individuals, communities, and institutions. The recent COVID-19 pandemic landed a massive blow to the country’s socioeconomic structure. SELCO Foundation’s teams deployed in remote locations for livelihood interventions programs had faced a multitude of challenges due to COVID-19 lockdown. As a response to COVID-19 crisis, SELCO Foundation rallied its resources to support relief efforts across India. It leveraged its expertise in energy by deploying a pan India network of grass-root partners; community-sourced innovations to ramp-up last mile healthcare infrastructure, build community resilience programs, and strengthen existing capabilities. Leveraging sustainable solutions as a medium, SELCO’s transformative work extended beyond access to clean energy, and sought to address complex issues such as healthcare, education, reduction in drudgery in manual jobs, creating opportunities for dignified work and more. Through this case study, this chapter discusses the emergence, journey, and initiatives of SELCO Foundation. It explores a practice-based pedagogy of social transformation, and challenges faced in ecosystem building during the times of the pandemic. The chapter initiates a discussion for a way forward for the social enterprise in times of uncertainties and stringencies in order to continue impacting underprivileged lives to the best.

Purpose – Grant-giving foundation leaders are increasingly concerned with understanding the primary role their institutions are pressured to play in financing the growing nonprofit sectors. The main objective of the chapter is to determine whether effective governance plays a major role in driving foundations’ innovation and value-creation processes.Methodology – Building on the idea that foundations should act as financial partners, managerial experts, and innovator facilitators who deal with the projects proposed by nonprofit organizations, this chapter uses a survey and the annual reports of Italian grant-giving foundations to isolate their records in term of governance, innovation attitude, and performance.Findings – The results of this chapter contribute to improving understanding of the drivers that help foundations to improve the sophistication level of the grant-giving process. In particular, the analysis of governance provides relevant insights about the path foundations follow to incorporate selected tailored methods and practices from the “for profit” competitive arena to improve foundations’ output and nonprofit grantees’ outcomes.Social implication – Many academics, political leaders, and practitioners expect foundations to play the unique dual role of merchant bank and venture capitalist to foster the positive impact of nonprofit organizations on societies and people. The findings of this chapter facilitate this process.Originality/value of the chapter – The main contribution of this study lies in proposing and testing a theoretical framework that foundations can implement to disseminate liquidity and managerial expertise efficiently among selected grantees and to improve grantees’ social outcome.

In contemporary cities, private actors, such as luxury fashion houses, increasingly participate in projects, affirming themselves as relevant players in urban transformation. Based on the case of “SouPra” district (Milan, Italy), this chapter focuses on the effects of the opening of a fashionable artistic venue on the tourism development. It explores the promotional actions implemented by tourism entrepreneurs after the opening of the Prada Foundation. The analysis leads to two main results: actors in tourism exploit the urban brand conveyed by Prada, which becomes an integral part of the city branding. Fashion houses also act as marketing devices, producing new urban narratives that influence both the tourist and the real estate market.

Corporate foundations – entities established to regularize corporate giving at an arm’s length removed from the firm – command substantial resources, root companies in the nonprofit sectors of their host communities, indirectly augment perceptions of corporate responsibility, and help firms to deflect controversies in an attentive global media environment. Despite these important roles, relatively little research has examined the institutional and strategic factors that influence such proximate charitable giving by firms. Using systematic data on foundations linked to S&P 3000 firms in the health sector – a growing domain in which public trust in high-stakes products and services is critical – fixed-effects models illustrate the primary role of network influences on giving: corporate foundations give substantially more in years following higher contributions by other (noncorporate) foundations in the health sector in a firm’s headquarters locality and also following increased contributions by industry peers through their corporate foundations. Giving also appears to reflect strategic reputational concerns, in that foundation contributions increase significantly following controversies associated with the corporate parent’s products and/or services. By contrast, giving tends to decline as the presence of outside directors on a firm’s board increases, as well as when firms carry heavier debt loads. Combined, these findings suggest that corporate foundations serve as a strategic proxy for the firm, reflecting both a company's position in community and interfirm networks while also mitigating the threat of reputational challenges.

This paper examines the role that effective governance plays in driving the strategies of grant-giving foundations as it relates to supporting various types of charitable and philanthropy activities of public interest. Today, foundations are more than ever active as pivotal element of the so called ‘private welfare state’ all around Europe and the United States. While other forms of organizations involved in philanthropy and public welfare face competition (i.e. corporations), budget constrain (i.e. governments) or fundraising imperatives (i.e. NGOs), private foundations do not feel such a pressure and can, therefore, tackle social issues that other organizations may not. Despite this privileged position, the role of governance in such non-profit organizations is far from certain. Prior literature review shows the lack of empirical analysis related to the role of governance in foundations as they attempt to shape various projects of strong public interest.

Given foundations’ unique societal role and obligations and the fiscal advantages enjoyed by them, the objective of this study is to explore the factors that drive their decision-making and resource allocation process and to examine the efficacy of their financial and non-financial resource allocation decisions. Using the data collected from 112 large Italian foundations, this paper studies the relationship between the governance mechanism and philanthropic strategies of private foundations.

The significance of the study is based on the fact that in the non-profit sector, more than in the for-profit one, board members are called to play a strong advisory role at the top of their traditional monitoring role. In other words, active boards are expected to screen relevant public needs and to properly invest foundations’ resources in meritorious projects; while inert boards risks to pursuit private goals, camouflaged as public interest, and to dissipate resources by unconditionally financing unrelated grant requests.

This paper aims to empirically examine if and how different governance attributes associate with different philanthropic strategies. The choice of Italian foundations represents an ideal research environment considering the strong reduction of governmental social spending due to the financial crisis and the simultaneous increase in the social relevance of private foundations to support social causes of significance.

In this chapter, we analyze the contribution of two Iberian Foundations to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; Global Goals). In particular, we studied the case of Eugénio de Almeida Foundation, from Portugal, and Yuste Foundation, from Spain, between 2016 and 2018. To achieve the main objective, three specific objectives were defined: the first one is to understand if sustainability is present in the Foundations Mission, Vision and Values; the second one is to analyze how the activities developed by each Foundations contribute to the SDGs and relate these activities to the SDGs targets and finally to do a comparative analysis of the results of the two foundations. To reach these objectives, we use the case study method based on the analysis of annual reports and websites of the two Foundations and cross-referenced information about the mission, objectives, values and activities developed since 2016 with the specific targets of Global Goals.

This chapter shows that Iberian Foundations contribute to the SDGs, since its mission fits the SDGs as its activities have a strong social nature and aim at sustainable development in the regions where they operate and beyond. However, we do not find the reporting evidence because the Foundations do not provide sustainability reports, nor do they provide sustainability information in their annual reports and accounts, or on their websites.

The study will present contributions at several levels: literature and practice. It makes contributions to the literature on relationships between sustainability practices and sustainability report and the regulation and institutionalization of sustainability practices and reporting for SDGs. Also, our study contributes to a better understanding of the role of Iberian Foundations as partners in achieving the Global Goals and their contribution to the effective, responsible and transparent development of institutions for United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Since its inception in 1975, Murdoch University in Western Australia has been unusual in the Australian context with its focus on interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education. Murdoch University has long claimed interdisciplinarity to be one of its distinguishing features. It has a university-wide policy on interdisciplinarity, and specifies ‘interdisciplinarity’ as one of the attributes students are expected to have when they graduate, that is: ‘A capacity to acquire knowledge and understanding of fields of study beyond a single discipline’. All Murdoch University students are introduced to interdisciplinary study in compulsory first-year foundation units that are the cornerstone of a Part 1 programme of studies. Foundation units aim to introduce students to university study, provide a broad perspective and expose students to a range of disciplines and teaching styles. Encouraging the exploration of a range of options before students proceed to their chosen field of study is dependent on a tradition of flexibility that enables students to move easily between and across disciplines. Over the years, the Part 1 programme at Murdoch University has been eroded by disciplinary demands on students, but the basic principles continue to be reaffirmed by external reviews and from within the university. Recently, the value of general undergraduate education has been further reinstated as other Australian universities have begun to investigate and instigate interdisciplinary programmes of study. The trend towards breadth in undergraduate education in Australia provides cause for reflection on interdisciplinarity at Murdoch University. This chapter describes the Murdoch University experience using the author's intimate knowledge of the University and draws on literature on interdisciplinarity to frame the lessons that have been learned over the past 30 years.

This chapter investigates the impact of coordination and control mechanisms on the orientation to performances, looking at the relation between Corporate Foundations and their Founder Firms. The research starts from the consideration that the relationship between CFs and Founder Firms can be considered similar to the relationship between headquarter and subsidiaries in large corporations, as the ties are very strong and significant.

In order to address the impact of control and coordination mechanisms on CFs’ orientation to performance, we managed a survey addressed to 188 CFs from six European countries, representing the most significant context for corporate philanthropy in Europe.

The results of a linear regression show that only selected mechanisms are effective for boosting CFs’ orientation to performance, and that these tools must be adapted to the specific nature of the CFs.

The study can help Founder Firms to identify the more effective mechanisms to improve the performance of the CFs they support, in order to ensure the possibility for both the parties to pursue the shared value creation.

The research has put in evidence that CFs must be explored taking into consideration their close tie to Founder Firm, which differentiates them from other interdependent foundations.

We survey private foundations for governance factors and internal processes that help explain why they barely miss (or not) the benchmark for qualifying distributions that would save them taxes on net investment income. Private foundations are subject to a 2% tax rate on their net investment income. If qualifying distributions are above a benchmark, the foundation qualifies for a 50% reduction in the tax rate to a 1% tax rate. This tax rate structure provides a “cliff effect” where the additional distributions required to qualify for the lower tax rate may actually be less than the potential tax savings (Sansing & Yetman, 2006). For example, one foundation in our sample could have saved $15,613 in tax by paying an additional $318 in distributions. We view this situation as a clear governance failure. Our first contribution to the literature is that board interest and information system strength affect the likelihood of avoiding such a governance failure, even after controlling for the general quality of management with management compensation and professional fees. Our second contribution is that foundations without sufficient financial savvy and sophistication appear to pay higher taxes. Given the large number of small, relatively unsophisticated foundations in America, differential tax rates based on sophistication is an interesting policy debate.