Science and research foundations in Austria

At this year’s Foundations Day, science and research took centre stage in the discussions. Alongside many impressive examples of how – and for what reasons – charitable foundations fund scientific research, a study was also presented which, for the first time, maps the Austrian foundation landscape in the field of science and research funding. FORWIT contributed to this study because charitable foundations can play an important role in a national innovation system.

As an advisory body to the Federal Government, FORWIT has a systemic perspective on research funding by private charitable foundations that are active in research promotion. What sets them apart, first of all, is that they are subject to a different logic of justification than state research funding. The latter is accountable to the taxpayer. A foundation, by contrast, can set its own accents in two respects.

Well-resourced foundations: Austria an international exception

For one thing, foundation funding brings not only additional money but also thematic priorities into research. This is an enrichment, because it allows topics that are often underfunded by the state (e.g. rare diseases) to be researched and to gain proper visibility through private charitable foundations. For researchers themselves, this opens up more places to which they can submit their research projects for funding.

Secondly, charitable foundations can be innovative in their decision-making procedures – that is, they can try out new methods and change their selection processes. Perhaps the best-known example is the “experiment” run by the German Volkswagen Foundation, which introduced partially randomised procedures (a combination of expert jury and lottery) and also had them accompanied by scientific evaluation. The aims of such experiments can vary: greater agility, identifying more high-risk research, speeding up the review process, or relieving the strain on the reviewer community. As a rule, the experience gained in this way is valuable for the system as a whole and, where it proves successful, is also taken up by public funders.

We know from many observations that a foundation must have reached a certain size, have sufficiently professional management and have built up a certain wealth of experience in order to set these accents within a research system. We do not yet see foundations of this kind in sufficient numbers in this country. This makes Austria an exception, because in almost all other countries with comparable levels of R&D expenditure there are numerous such well-resourced foundations.

A look at Sweden

In this context, reference should be made to a policy brief in which Mikolaj Norek and Thomas König take a closer look at the role of charitable foundations in Sweden, examining both private charitable foundations and public foundations. The following observations are shared there.

Among the private charitable foundations, there are some that operate in the orbit of industrial conglomerates and are used in a very targeted and strategic way to ensure that technological know-how is developed further at world level over the long term, and also to identify talent and, in a sense, to bind it to the corporations through these foundations. The capital transferred by the corporation into the foundation’s endowment is thus put to use with great foresight. It is not only philanthropy that is decisive here; benefits for the foundation and the corporation behind it are also meant to be generated. At the same time, these are also benefits for Sweden as a business location. In Austria, the significance of such foundations for research and science funding has unfortunately long been underestimated. Instead, the legal system favours self-interested private foundations that serve to keep capital in the country without creating any incentives to use capital returns for charitable purposes.

By contrast, Austria’s policymakers have indeed established public foundations and funds in the field of research and science funding – and in doing so it followed the international trend. Here too, however, Sweden is instructive, because its public foundations and funds are distinguished by three remarkable criteria that enable them to achieve high impact: first, a high degree of autonomy thanks to their own endowment, which yields annual interest income; secondly, professional management that ensures the initiation, announcement and administration of research funding to a high standard; and thirdly, their own legal form anchored in statute, which goes hand in hand with a clear public mission.

Conclusions for Austria

In Austria too, policymakers have now recognised how important the foundation sector is for a diverse research funding system. Against this backdrop, a number of conclusions can be drawn for the further development of this sector:

• It cannot be assumed that funds from private charitable foundations can now provide a quick remedy for the difficulties in financing research in Austria that have arisen from the country’s fiscal problems.
• Nevertheless, it does make sense to work towards private charitable foundations taking on, in the long term, a role of the kind we know from other systems. Their function is not only that of complementary funding, but also that of strategic innovation. This would undoubtedly do good to Austria’s RTI system, which to date has been strongly geared towards funding provided from the federal budget and bound by the logic of public administration.
• The empirical findings of the new study should above all also be used to foster an informed dialogue with those who are already active in research funding – and with those showing an interest in it.
• Furthermore, the momentum should be used to further develop the existing public foundations and funds by drawing on international best-practice examples.

FORWIT, as an independent advisory body to the Federal Government, in any case considers it expedient to stay on this issue.

Note: This text summarises the contribution by Sonja Sheikh to the closing panel of the Foundations Day 2026.