ERSTE Foundation: from Austria’s First Savings Bank to a Civil Society Workshop in Central and Eastern Europe

The ERSTE Foundation evolved in 2003 from Österreichische Spar-Casse, Austria's first savings bank founded in 1819. Concentrating on the themes of social innovation, contemporary culture, European cohesion, and democracy, the foundation continues to undertake and finance various projects. We interviewed Nicole Traxler, social innovation manager of the ERSTE Foundation which operates in civil society, primarily in Central and Eastern European context, on their history and the activities of the foundation.

The ERSTE Foundation was established in 2003 but the origins go back to the 19th century. Could you please tell us about your story? What brings the legacy of savings bank association to the current work of the foundation? 

Well, savings banks have been the social businesses of their time. In 1819, some Viennese citizens founded a private association to enable access to common people to make provisions for the future and to provide secure and independent livelihood for themselves and their families. The idea was to solve a social problem. The bank was run by dedicated volunteers in a poor neighborhood. It was innovative and obviously sustainable. It was called ‘Erste Oesterreichische Spar-Casse’ and was the ‘first Austrian savings bank’, originally organized as a charitable association. The primary underlying strategy of helping people to become active members of society under their own steam is a well-established practice in development cooperation and community support across the globe today. Instead of making charitable donations, which only alleviate symptoms in the short term, the aim is to establish ‘self-sustaining’ structures, organized locally by the people involved. ERSTE Foundation evolved from the Erste Österreichische Spar-Casse in 2003. We view the historical roots of the initial savings bank idea as a valuable role model and inspiration for our civil-society commitment today. As the main shareholder of Erste Group, we reinvest parts of our dividends into the societies, where this – now stock listed – bank earns its profits. Also, the bank has a sustainable approach by taking care of the financial health of its clients.

ERSTE Foundation presents itself as “a creative workshop for ideas and innovation, a lab for topics of the future which increases its effectiveness through the strategic cooperation with networks”. How do you fulfill this function, through which activities?

The creative workshop is not a metaphor, it is real. Four years ago, we invented “The ERSTE Foundation Working Table”. This is a regular meeting at our premises at a long table, an opportunity to share ideas, thoughts, and projects in the form of “pitches”. ERSTE Foundation staff, partners, and experts are invited to discuss input and thus generate important momentum for our work. We facilitate the exchange of knowledge and ideas within our network, and we want to inspire. Last year, ERSTE Foundation celebrated the 200th anniversary of both our founding and the savings bank idea in Austria. We used the occasion as an opportunity to organize a series of four events that brought together many bright minds. For these Tipping Point Talks, ERSTE Foundation invited renowned thinkers, scientists, and pioneers from all over the world to reflect on their thoughts and inspire each other and the representatives of civil society from our network. 

Our activities are focused on social innovation, financial health, European democracy, and contemporary culture. We support those who are committed to changing our society for the better. We invest in the development of new digital approaches, in capacity building and organizational development of NGOs and in a sustainable ecosystem for social enterprises. We aim to empower people who actively address the social challenges of our time. We also believe that financial literacy is life literacy. Everyone wants to attain financial independence and live in dignity and prosperity. To achieve these goals, we need a sound understanding of how to handle money. Everyone should have access to this knowledge. We provide young and older people with opportunities to increase their financial literacy and develop tools to enable those who are in a difficult financial situation to regain their ability to act and thus reclaim their personal freedom. We also believe that the European idea is worth fighting for. We aim to bring together the best brains and political decision-makers, promote first-rate journalism in the public interest and help shape the debate about a resilient, democratic, united Europe. Finally: culture is a central part of our identity. Every society needs culture: as a laboratory in which the past is considered, the present criticized and the future imagined. Culture strengthens the complex identities in Eastern Europe’s societies. We, therefore, want to explore important artistic practices in the recent Eastern European past. The cultural heritage of dissident history must be secured and made accessible to an international audience. Artists need (free) spaces for their production, theorists need international recognition; and both, work and interpretation, should be accessible.

You are the biggest supporter of the “Social Impact Award” (SIA) which took place for the first time in 2019 in Turkey, too. How did the ERSTE Foundation become part of this project and in which ways continue to support SIA?

ERSTE Foundation has been a supporter of the Social Impact Award from its very beginning. About 10 years ago, in Austria, the field of social entrepreneurship was mainly not existing and the concept of using business approaches to solve social problems was new. The Vienna University of Economics and Business came up with this concept of empowering young persons to make a change. The project built up their awareness of the social problems they were confronted with and supported them with processes and tools to solve them. That approach of empowerment and development of sustainable solutions to social problems was close to our founding history and we saw a high need in it, especially in the CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) region. Therefore, we joint the project and supported its scaling into this region. Since then the Social Impact Award has further developed. Today it is implemented in more than 15 countries throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. It encourages young persons in all those countries to take action and connects them to an international community of peers, experts, and supporters. This boosts the motivation and perseverance that you need to start and run a social enterprise. We have seen many projects, initiatives, and successful ventures that started with the support of the Social Impact Award. They include for example Pragulic, a Czech social venture offering tours and experiences through the eyes of homeless persons combined with advocacy work (https://pragulic.cz/?lang=en) or Somaro that introduced the concept of social supermarkets to Romania (http://somaro.org/en/welcome/ ). These and other examples (that you can find in the book of inspiration: https://socialimpactaward.net/book-of-inspiration/  ) offer new solutions to existing problems, which, we believe, is important in the advancement of the sector and society. 

erstestiftung.org transmits voices and the ideas of civil society from natural gas issues in Croatia to freedom of art and censorship in Hungary.  How does the ERSTE Foundation define the term “civil society” and its limits? 

erstestiftung.org magazine was a reaction on the fact that it became more and more difficult to create awareness for social or cultural topics in CEE in classical media. So we decided to create our own platform for content. We share and translate articles from CEE and other media which cover topics around our fields of activities. Pieces of investigative journalism from a fellowship that we fund – like the article on fossil energy in Croatia – are equally interesting to our audience as a video analysis on Polish governance from a think tanker, reports on cultural events, or on demographic developments in Eastern Europe. Civil Society is by definition citizens’ engagement. It can be organized in civil society organizations or un-organised like in family and neighborhood assistance, activism, or social movements. And civil society has different shades. We tend to forget what we call the “dark side of civil society”. It represents these parts that generate hate and suspicion and disregard human rights. Recently, we commissioned a study to learn how the terms “civil society” and “European Union” are seen in 4 CEE countries. The method was social listening in open internet forum discussions. We learned that a majority of people see NGOs and civil society activists paid and manipulated by foreign powers. Only people who had personal contact with NGOs had a positive opinion on civil society. It also gave us a clear picture of the limits of “our civil society”, meaning the bubbles that we operate in and those that we do not reach – and in most cases that we do not know enough about.