Oak Foundation
 Oak Foundation logo | |
| Formation | 1983 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Alan M. Parker |
| Focus | Charitable grants |
| Headquarters | Geneva, Switzerland. |
| Coordinates | 46°13′25″N 6°06′35″E / 46.22364683346175°N 6.109682482951501°E Fatal error: The format of the coordinate could not be determined. Parsing failed. |
President | Douglas Griffiths[1] |
Revenue | USD 383 million (grants made) |
| Endowment | unknown |
| Website | oakfnd.org |
The Oak Foundation is a charitable foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
The foundation was founded in 1983 by billionaire Alan M. Parker, cofounder of the duty-free company DFS Group.[2][3]
In addition to its headquarters in Switzerland, the Oak Foundation has offices in Denmark, the UK, the US and Zimbabwe.[4]
The foundation makes grants in eight major program areas plus two country-level programs (in Denmark and Zimbabwe).[5] In 2025, the Oak Foundation reported making roughly one thousand grants in 33 countries totaling USD 383 million.[6]
The program areas are:
- Environment
- Climate
- Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
- Housing and Homelessness
- International Human Rights
- Issues Affecting Women
- Learning Differences
- Special Interest (trustee-driven grants outside the other program areas)
Historically, most of Oak's grant making has been for specific programs but has been shifting recently to making core, unrestricted grants to organizations.[7][8]
Oak Foundation's support for issues such as climate justice[9] and human rights has attracted criticism from conservative organizations[10] and governments such as Russia's, where in January 2026 it was announced that the Oak Foundation was classified as undesirable in Russia[11] under the Russian undesirable organizations law.
References
- ↑ Oak Foundation has announced the appointment of Douglas Griffiths as the new President of Oak Foundation. alliancemagazine.org, 21 November 2018.
- ↑ Jon Nordheimer: Millions of Dollars Couldn't Keep DFS Group Together. New York Times 12 March 1997.
- ↑ "Oak Foundation | Devex". www.devex.com. Retrieved 2026-04-16.
- ↑ "Values, mission & history". Oak Foundation. Retrieved 2026-04-16.
- ↑ November 2025, Miguel Antonio Tamonan // 17 (2025-11-17). "The Oak Foundation's top grantees in low- and middle-income countries". Devex. Retrieved 2026-04-16.
- ↑ "Home page". Annual Report 2025. Retrieved 2026-04-12.
- ↑ "How Philanthropy Creates Stronger Results Through Core Funding". Impact Insider. 2025-04-23. Retrieved 2026-04-17.
- ↑ Staff, I. P. (2025-09-27). "Oak Foundation". www.insidephilanthropy.com. Retrieved 2026-04-17.
- ↑ "A new focus for climate philanthropy: interview with Florence Tercier and Anne Henshaw". Alliance magazine. 2016-06-07. Retrieved 2026-04-16.
- ↑ "The Left's Green Giant: Meet the Oak Foundation". Retrieved 2026-04-16.
- ↑ "OAK Foundation". Inoteka. Retrieved 2026-04-12.
External links
- Oak Foundation website
- Oak Foundation European Foundation Center
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