About us

History

Start Foundation is a mature Venture Philanthropy Fund (founded in 1998) that does both grant making as well as Social Investments. Start Foundation origins from Start Temporary Recruitment Services. Start Temporary Recruitment Services was founded in 1977 to combat unemployment by offering flexible labor contracts. The founding fathers represented employers, trade unions and national government. In 2002 Start suffered severely from the economic decline 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. It’s endowment seize is approx 100 million euro.  START provides grants as well as investments (loans).

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 those lessons to improve practice for the field at large.

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.