Greetings from Pierre Sellal, Chairman of the Fondation de France

Dear Reader,

The Fondation de France is pleased to express, through me, its sincere and very warm wishes to you, at the dawn of this new year, which I hope will bring the best to each of you, in your personal life and your professional projects.

Last year, at the same time, we measured and underlined the resilience that the Fondation de France had shown throughout the year 2020, to remain committed and enterprising in serving the public interest, in the extraordinary and unprecedented context of the repeated lockdowns that our country has experienced.

This demonstration of resilience was to allow us, we thought, to approach the year 2021 with resolution, albeit with a little anxiety, as we feared it would manifest the damage and harm of the health crisis we had been experiencing for months. We foresaw the risks: bankruptcies, unemployment, increased precariousness, deficits in education and training, multiple inequalities reinforced by the downturn in activity. We also feared that all these negative factors would weaken philanthropic impulses, dampen generosity and compromise our ability to respond to needs increased by the impact of the crisis.

Fortunately, these fears have proved to be unfounded, at least in part. As of today, unemployment in France is at its lowest level for ten years, the number of companies closing down is at a surprisingly low level and, above all, the generosity of our donors has not been affected, quite the contrary. It is expected to bring the total amount of resources raised in 2021 to an unprecedented level. Moreover, the desire to form philanthropic projects and to seek the support of the Fondation de France for this purpose has in no way been diminished by the pandemic: in 2021, 43 new foundations have been created under our aegis, remarkable for the diversity of their founders, the scope of the tasks and causes they plan to serve, and, for some of them, the size of the resources they will raise.

I would like to thank all our donors and founders for the trust they have placed in us, and assure them of the commitment of the Fondation de France and its teams to continue to strive to act with even greater efficiency, relevance in the definition of its objectives, and rigour in the application of its procedures.

These are precisely the inspirations for the rethinking of the Foundation's social mission strategy, which has been undertaken with determination and will continue this year. It must embrace a renewed analysis of the multiple environments in which the Fondation de France operates, an accurate perception of current needs in a changing society, and an in-depth evaluation of our action programmes. It must demonstrate the capacity of our fifty-year-old Foundation to adapt and renew itself in order to assert itself, more than ever, as the flagship of French philanthropy.

The way the world is moving and the way our societies are changing are both worrying and challenging. To help provide answers to some and rally around others, philanthropy plays a crucial role more than ever: to provide a tangible demonstration of the purpose and the possibility for each person to act for the common good.

A very Happy New Year to everyone.

Pierre Sellal
Chairman of the Fondation de France