From the Hague Club to the European Foundation Centre up to Philea, the Adriano Olivetti Foundation has always played an active role in promoting philanthropy in Italy and abroad.

Since the 1960s when, together with a group of private foundations from the United States (Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation) and from Europe (Max Planck, Thyssen, Calouste Gulbenkian, Agnelli, Bernard Van Leer and Nuffield, among others), the Adriano Olivetti Foundation contributed at the birth of The Hague Club, formally established in 1971 during the International Foundations Meeting held in Turin at the behest of the Volkswagen Foundation (Germany), the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation (Italy), the Bernard van Leer Foundation (Netherlands) and the Wellcome Trust (UK).

The Club took its name from the Dutch city where the preparatory meetings for its creation took place and set out to serve as a forum for the discussion of relevant international issues and the role of philanthropy in the progress of contemporary societies.

In continuity with the experience of The Hague Club, the Foundation joined the European Foundation Centre * in 1998, a wider network of European foundations that supports and enhances the role and work of philanthropy in Europe and in the world. From 2004 to 2008, the President Laura Olivetti represented the European Foundations, adhering to the European Foundation Centre, in the International Committee of the Council on Foundations in Washington, which carries out a function of promoting cooperation in the field of philanthropy worldwide.

Since 2015, the Foundation has joined the EFC Communications Professionals in Philanthropy Network, which brings together the Heads of Communication of the associated Foundations and, since 2018, the EFC Funders’s Forum on Sustainable Cities, with which studies and analyzes are conducted to identify innovative processes for a future. more inclusive, equitable and sustainable urban environment, in line with the principles of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.