Shell Foundation

The Shell Foundation is an initiative of the oil major Royal Dutch Shell. Launched in1997, it is a worldwide, social investment initiative to concentrate on working with external partners to promote sustainable development . It is an independent registered charity which has three Shell executives on its board balanced by an equal number of independent non-executive directors, in line with UK Charity Commission rules.

In 2000 Shell formalised the foundation by creating an income stream based on a notional capital set aside of $250m (£133m). This notional allocation is managed on the charity's behalf by independent advisers but the capital cannot be drawn upon until 2010. The Shell Foundation draws upon its links with Shell to "harness the knowledge, leverage and convening power of Shell companies in ways that add real and transparent value to achieving the charitable objectives of the Shell Foundation.”" [ [http://www.shellfoundation.org/ extract from The Shell Foundation website] ]

In South Africa and Uganda, The Shell Foundation has facilitated the formation of partnerships that help small local businesses to enter the energy services market on a financially viable basis which allows them to serve the needs of the impoverished. The Shell Foundation claims on its website that it is also "Bringing down the number of deaths caused by indoor air pollution; Easing the traffic congestion and pollution clogging up developing country mega-cities and; Giving developing-country producers improved access to world markets." Further details about the background and activities of The Shell Foundation are contained in a Daily Telegraph article [http://www.shell2004.com/week15/daily_telegraph14april05.htm “One Shell of a fight against poverty”,] which is a source of some of the above information.

Controversy

On 28 September 2006, an article published in The Guardian newspaper alleged that "An attempt by Shell to portray itself as a model of corporate social responsibility was undermined last night after Whitehall documents showed its charitable arm discussing a key commercial project with a British government minister." The article entitled [http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1882372,00.html "Campaigners attack Shell’s charity arm over Sakhalin talks"] related to The Shell Foundation. The Charity Commission subsequently conducted an inquiry and according to an [http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1924170,00.html article published in The Guardian] on 17 October 2006, concluded that The Shell Foundation "has fallen short of the good governance and decision-making that we expect from large charities”.

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