Good Deed Foundation’s 2023

While 2023 was the year of movement in Estonia, for Good Deed Foundation, which turned 20 in May, it was the year of dynamic movement. Let the numbers speak for themselves.

During the year, we worked with 31 initiatives. Of these, 10 in the NULA Incubator, 10 in the Good Deed Impact Fund and 11 in the Good Deed Education Fund. This meant keeping up to date with the initiatives’ progress and development needs, providing advice and finding solutions. Additionally, work with the initiatives that applied to the funds – mapping their topics more precisely and identifying their support needs.

Last year, the Funds supported 11 initiatives with almost half a million euro. Specifically, €128,750 in grants were awarded to four initiatives from the Impact Fund and €370,064 from the Education Fund to seven initiatives (including one investment). Several major projects also reached the final stage, such as the recruitment handbook for school leaders and the career and competences model for educational leaders. The fourth batch graduated from the Educational Leaders Internship Programme, and the fifth batch started their journey in the programme.

The year 2023 remains particularly characterised by the keyword “community”. With the support of the Active Citizens Fund, we rethought and digitised the whole system of professional volunteering in Heateos. The most visible part of this is the new website, where you will find many more volunteering opportunities than before. But again, the numbers:

• 100 professional volunteers actively contributed their time and expertise to both Good Deed Foundation and our initiatives;
• In the course of the year, 47 new experts joined our volunteer community;
• In total, the experts contributed around 950 hours;
• we mediated 31 challenges (=opportunities to contribute to initiatives);
• the most active volunteer contributed more than 115 hours of their time, average time contribution was 9.8 hours.

In order to bring together the Heateo community (=initiators, volunteers, supporters) and to promote professional volunteering more widely, we organised eight public events during the year, with a total of around 200 participants.

We conducted the 8th season of NULA, in which 10 teams were selected to participate out of 67 ideas submitted (9 completed the full programme). They participated in 8 workshops for a total of 30 hours. Thus, 71 teams have participated in the programme over the 8 seasons, with a total of 626 ideas submitted. The solutions that have passed NULA have received start-up grants from the National Civil Society Foundation (NCSF) for a total of half a million euros. In 2023, Logopesa received a 25 000 euro start-up grant from the NCSF. A special €3,000 prize from Luminor was awarded to Claar Education this season.

Just like Good Deed Foundation, the “I love to help” donation platform also had a birthday year. In cooperation with Swedbank, we have been working on developing Estonia’s giving culture for 15 years now. During this time, exactly 100 organisations have collected donations on the platform, and the average donation has grown from €3.2 to €44. In 2023, €350,267 was donated through the platform. In addition, last year saw the completion of another application process, with nearly 100 applicants, 43 of whom were invited to join the platform.

2023 was a year of change for the Good Deed Foundation team. We started the year with six people, but in the summer Kersti, who was the current Head of the Heateo Impact Fund, and Ulla, who was in charge of the school leadership area at the Education Fund, took up new challenges. At the end of the summer, Avely joined us to lead the Good Deed Foundation’s Community Project. With the end of the NULA season in November, project manager Agnes left the team to pursue her dream. However, the start of the new year brought new news and Karin, with her excellent project management skills, now complements the team.