SNF from 1996 to 2026: A 30-year journey with humanity at the core

Andreas C. Dracopoulos
SNF Co-President

Our founder, Stavros S. Niarchos, set us on our course with a broad-by-design mission, and today our work spans pillars in Arts & Culture, Education, Health & Sports, and Social Welfare. These find their collective expression in civic life, which, though not an official grantmaking pillar, is an important focus of our work as the basis of a strong democracy and thriving society.

We welcome good ideas for improving lives, solving problems, and responding to crises through our open online application, and as a result, we’ve partnered with an incredible array of organizations.

Philanthropy, as we’ve come to understand it over the decades, has the flexibility to move nimbly, to try new things, to bridge gaps. Its aims are systemic, but always complement rather than attempt to replace the public system. Our role is to connect the dots, bringing ideas together with the resources needed to implement them, putting disparate efforts by different organizations into dialogue with one another, and facilitating the exchange of know-how across institutions and borders.

Our Global Health Initiative (GHI), developed in response to what we heard from stakeholders, includes three state-of-the-art SNF public hospitals being built across Greece, equipment and training that enable providers to deliver the best quality care, and research with the potential to transform lives. At the same time, we know that art, music, exercise, laughter, play, and access to nature all have important roles to play in healing, and mental health and physical health need to be seen as parts of a unified whole.

Meaningfully increasing access to care means helping ensure that even those living in remote areas can find basic health services close to home. With support from SNF, Mobile Medical Units have delivered free care in remote areas including islands across Greece for more than a decade.

Sports and health are joined in a single pillar for us not only because they are linked through physical fitness, but also because both can contribute to the overall wellbeing of individuals and communities. We believe deeply in the power of sports to foster inclusion for people with disabilities, a sense of belonging, academic and personal development, mental resilience, and even lifesaving skills like swimming.

Art is essential. It brings us together, reminds us of what we share, challenges us to see things differently. Everyone—even those who think it’s not for them—should have the chance to experience great art without accessibility considerations, a language barrier, or simply a lack of familiarity get in the way.

We support early-career artists in developing their practice and finding their voices, while also providing opportunities for the public to enjoy the work of their established peers. Since our earliest years, we have supported a multitude of arts and culture professionals, from interns gaining museum experience and scholars studying art history and curation to artisans preserving cultural heritage.

In Greece, we’ve been glad to help long-envisioned cultural projects reach the public, such as the national gallery and national museum of contemporary art in Athens and an ancient mosaic project in Sparta. Among many other projects, we’ve also offered nationwide support to local theaters, music schools, and local folk societies. In countries around the world, we have supported major museums and cultural organizations to help them reach people, as well as efforts to help art reach prisons, nurseries, schools, hospitals, and blank walls in blighted neighborhoods, where it has shown its power to transform and inspire.

Every person carries within them immense potential. All it takes to unlock it are the right conditions: access, guidance, and opportunity. Through collaboration with our grantee partners, we work to create these conditions by removing barriers to learning, opening new paths for growth, and helping people claim their own future.

Learning doesn’t begin or end in a classroom. It’s a lifelong journey. That’s why our grants in education extend from supporting schools and youth programs to creating opportunities for learning at all ages, professional development, entrepreneurship, and upskilling. Curiosity and growth have no age limit.

We support research that increases our understanding of the world and the sharing of knowledge and expertise across academic disciplines, organizational boundaries, and international borders.

Public libraries like the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) in New York—a beautiful “palace for the people” that welcomes all comers and has something to offer everyone, regardless of age, interest, or background—represent the best of society.

All people deserve access to life’s essentials—to food and shelter, to the chance to support themselves in living a life of dignity, and the chance to ask for a helping hand when calamity strikes—whether it comes in the form of a natural disaster, a human one, a pandemic, a socioeconomic crisis.

Always working collaboratively, we seek to support those who are there to support others in difficult moments. We are glad to be able to help provide the resources needed to turn solidarity into action.

Civic life is the fabric of which society is made—but that doesn’t mean it can be taken for granted. It must be actively tended by encouraging dialogue across difference, by cultivating actively engaged citizenship, and by creating public spaces where people from all walks of life can get together, express themselves, and make the place their own, like the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens.

Though civic life is not one of our official pillars, it weaves together elements of all the others and is an essential component of healthy democracies and thriving societies.

Our grantee-partners are working hard to help young people understand how democracy functions and practice making change on real issues affecting their lives. Our grants support university students in learning how to exchange views constructively, how to balance personal freedom and solidarity, and how to use their voices to nudge us toward a fairer world.

We support exploration of the type of civil society leadership called for today, as well as nuanced analysis that can help inform public decision-making. At the same time, we’re lending our support, encouragement, and expertise to an experiment in reviving a Greek village—Vamvakou in Laconia, where our founder had his roots—where civic life had all but disappeared.

Essential to any democracy is a robust fourth estate, a free and thriving press. In this spirit, our close partners at the journalism nonprofit iMEdD are supporting journalistic excellence.

Our intention is to celebrate—alongside the extraordinary nonprofit organizations that we have collaborated with through the years—their varied, enduring work. SNF Nostos is taking place on June 21–28 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens, with activities held concurrently at other sites across Greece.

“Humanity at the core,” our guiding principle, will be the starting point for the SNF Nostos Conference, a key component of SNF Nostos over the years. It will be a source of inspiration for discussions and parallel activities focusing on the 30-year grantmaking journey we have taken with our global community of grantee-partners, as well on where philanthropy is headed in the next 30 years.

The SNF Nostos program is designed jointly with our close partners at the journalism nonprofit iMEdD. With extensive guidance from the SNF Nostos Youth Advisory Committee, a group of young people from countries around the world who are actively involved in planning, SNF Nostos will once again offer a platform for young people to share their views and ideas. SNF Nostos will also include a much-loved run, a futuristic ballet performance on a semi-truck, a play where you’re the jury and AI is on trial, a multitude of exhibitions including an interactive installation tracing SNF’s grantmaking through time and space, and more.