The Kamprad Family Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Research & Charity will join as a funder in Future Challenges in the Nordics

The research programme Future Challenges in the Nordics – People, Culture and Society is getting a sixth funder as The Kamprad Family Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Research & Charity from Sweden joins. The programme will finance research related to the great societal challenges of our time. All programme funders have decided to increase their financial contributions and total funding now stands at about 10.5 million euros.

Future Challenges in the Nordics is a seven-year programme for research within humanities and social sciences in areas that pose major social and cultural challenges. The programme’s main goal is to stimulate research across national and disciplinary boundaries and produce results that will concretely benefit society.

Finnish foundations that are providing funding for the programme are The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland, The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, The Finnish Cultural Foundation, and Stiftelsen Brita Maria Renlunds minne. In Sweden, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and now The Kamprad Family Foundation.

“We are happy to participate in the research programme, Future Challenges in the Nordics. Together, we can help support research that can make a difference by providing knowledge to society and value for citizens and policymakers, while strengthening cooperation among funders in the Nordics,” says Lena Fritzén, Executive Board Member for The Kamprad Family Foundation.

Lena Fritzén,Executive Board Member for The Kamprad Family Foundation
Lena Fritzén, Executive Board Member for The Kamprad Family Foundation.

The Kamprad Family Foundation was founded in 2011 by Ingvar Kamprad and his family to support, stimulate and reward education and scientific research to promote entrepreneurship, the environment, skills, health and social development. The foundation puts a heavy emphasis on the belief that the results of research and education should benefit many people quickly and cost-efficiently.

“We welcome The Kamprad Family Foundation as a funder of the research programme with joy and pride,” says Christer Kuvaja, coordinator of the research programme and Head of Research at the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland. “The fact that we have a new financial contributor and that the other funders want to raise their contributions shows that the research we will conduct within the programme is of a high quality and also necessary.”     

The research programme was originally going to fund 6–10 projects with up to one million euros per project. After the application process during spring and summer, the financiers could see that there were so many high-quality applications among the 449 received that they wanted to raise the amount of funding. Now the total has reached about 10.5 million euros.

The projects that will receive financing within the research programme will be announced in the near future.