About us

History
Start Foundation is an established Venture Philanthropy Fund (founded in 1998) that makes both grants and Social Investments. Start Foundation developed out of Start Temporary Recruitment Services. Start Temporary Recruitment Services was founded in 1977 to combat unemployment by offering flexible labor contracts. The founders represented employers, trade unions and national government. In 2002 Start suffered severely from the economic downturn and was sold to United Services Group. The shareholder Foundation decided to cash the revenues from the transaction and to continue the work of Start Foundation. Its endowment seize is approx 100 million euro.  

Mission Statement
Start Foundation creates, preserves and makes jobs accessible for disadvantaged  persons who have no or limited access to the labor market in the Netherlands.

Vision
Jobs transform lives and communities. We believe the opportunity to work should be available to everyone, everywhere.

Values

Solution-oriented
We use creativity and analysis to solve hard problems, while measuring impact to identify what works and what doesn’t. We communicate these lessons to improve practice for the field in general.

Engaged
Our high-impact, hands-on, venture philanthropy approach achieves results. We actively cultivate alliances, identify aligned interests, foster mutual accountability and ignite positive change.

Excellence
We bring all of our skill, knowledge and compassion to our work, and work with well-run social ventures and other businesses to efficiently use the resources entrusted to us.