Stichting IKEA Foundation


The Stichting IKEA Foundation is a Dutch foundation founded in 1982 by Ingvar Kamprad, a Swedish billionaire and founder of IKEA. The foundation receives its income from the Stichting INGKA Foundation. Initially focused on architecture and interior design, in 2009 it's remit expanded to include "improving children's opportunities"

Giving

Unlike its funder the INGKA Foundation the IKEA Foundation has ANBI status from the Dutch Tax Service. In 2017, the foundation received 159 million euros from the INGKA Foundation, of which it donated 144 million. Recipients of the donations include MSF, UNHCR, Save the Children, and We Mean Business Coalition for climate change.

Criticisms and reforms

In May 2006, The Economist magazine estimated that the parent organization's foundation's endowment was worth US$36 billion, making it the world's wealthiest charity at the time; however, it also stated that the foundation "is at the moment also one of its least generous. The overall set-up of IKEA minimises tax and disclosure, handsomely rewards the founding Kamprad family and makes IKEA immune to a takeover". Following the publication of the Economist article, Ingvar Kamprad went to court in the Netherlands to expand the donor intent of the foundation, whereby more money would be spent on children in the developing world. Prior to this, the foundation's articles of association limited the foundation's purpose to "innovation in the field of architectural and interior design" and it had given a relatively small amount of its assets to the Lund Institute of Technology.