How we are funded and governed
How we fund our work
The European AI & Society Fund is a non-partisan, non-profit organisation and not affiliated with any public or private institution.
As a pooled fund, we distribute money awarded to us by our funding partners. Most of our funding comes from grants and voluntary contributions from charitable foundations, which fund individual programmes or projects as well as our core and organisational development. We do not receive any funding from the EU, governments or private companies.
We are hosted by the Network of European Foundations, a leading association dedicated to philanthropic collaboration, which provides legal, financial and administrative infrastructure for our work.
Our funders
We work with a diverse group of foundations, from small European family foundations to global tech justice institutions. A total of 18 funding partners supported our work in 2025. See the full list of our partners below. In 2025 we had a total income of €4,744,124.44, with a carry forward used in 2025 of €581,708.85.
By working together, we make sure their investments are strategic, well-coordinated and have greater collective impact to build the future we want to see.
Where our funding comes from
Income 2025
€250,000
€1.010.441,23
€131.261,00
€90.000,00
€194.256,00
€218.000,00
€225.000,00
€250.000,00
€580.000,00
€288.457,36
€210.000,00
€265.000,00
€450.000,00
How we spend our funds
The majority of our pooled fund is distributed to public interest organisations in Europe through grants. See our grantee database. We also spend money on building our grantees’ capacity and skills, commissioning research and on communications to strengthen the field. A small percentage covers our operational costs.
Expenses 2025
Grants: €3.333.117,47
Collective Action Fund: €35.000,00
Learning & Development: €121.051,00
Total Grants: €3.489.168,47
Events, skills & capacity building for grantees: €194.959,10
Consultancy/Research: €182.235,23
Communication: €51.057,55
Total Fieldbuilding: €428.251,88
European AI & Society Fund staff: €490.994,06
Coordination meetings: €5.776,12
Travelling Secretariat: €28.999,74
NEF – cost contribution: €157.799,05
Desk rental: €16.355,79
IT: €2.980,64
Training: €4.381,74
Unforeseen: €4.416,95
Total Operations: €711.704,09
Social reserve: €115.000,00
Total expenses €4.744.124,44
How we are governed
We are hosted by the Network of European Foundations (NEF) which provides the operational framework, expertise and oversight.
Our funding partners make up our Steering Committee, which meets four times a year.
Based on insight from our grantees and the wider field, the European AI & Society Fund team recommend strategy, grant programmes, fieldbuilding activities, capacity building, communications and operational decisions to the Steering Committee – who in turn recommends them to NEF for approval.
We also have two co-Chairs who help coordinate the Committee:
Guillermo Beltrà
Co-Chair of the Steering Committee
Guillermo Beltrà is the Policy Director at Luminate Strategic Initiatives. Previously Guillermo led the Technology and Society team at the Open Society Foundation’s Europe and Central Asia Program.
In the past Guillermo also led Access Now’s policy team globally, and before that, he was director of Legal and Economic Affairs at the European Consumer Organisation, where he led the policy and advocacy work on digital and technology policy.
Rogier van der Weerd
Co-Chair of the Steering Committee
Rogier van der Weerd is Managing Director of Adessium Foundation, an independent Dutch grantmaking foundation that supports civil society organisations across Europe working towards a free, sustainable and just society.
Before joining Adessium Foundation, Rogier spent around a decade in strategy consulting, first at Monitor Group (now part of Deloitte) and later at Boer & Croon. He holds an MSc in Aerospace Engineering from Delft University of Technology and, in 2022, completed a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Amsterdam. He serves on the boards of the Dutch Association of Foundations (FIN) and the European Network of Foundations (NEF).