Promoting Good Living? Purpose and Practice in Savings Bank Foundations

In this paper, I dive into how Danish savings bank foundations have handled their stated purpose(s) with a special emphasis on how they have prioritised between non-profit objectives and for-profit oriented goals like raising awareness, building a positive image of their mother institution and be a supportive owner. It is a story of how the money accumulated in the savings bank were handled after demutualisation. A story of struggling to find the right organisational form and relation between a new foundation and a savings bank turned into a joint stock company. This will include discussion of the blurred border between for-profit and non-profit purposes.
The research questions I want to answer are: How have Danish savings bank foundations prioritised between different purposes from 1990 to 2010? And how can this empirical case contribute to discussions about corporate philanthropy? In answering these questions, I will emphasise the different developments in the three foundations studied.