About us

The knodel foundation was established in 2017 by PANDION CEO Reinhold Knodel and his son Patrick Knodel, who heads the foundation as CEO. By making an annual donation of EUR 1,000,000, PANDION AG, as the donor, makes a decisive contribution to project funding and also covers the administrative costs incurred. This ensures that 100 percent of every Euro donated to the knodel foundation reaches the projects. Furthermore, since 2021, every additional donation received from other individuals or organizations is matched by PANDION.


Our impact

We initiate systemic changes with the goal of a fairer world. That is why we are committed to strengthening the global South by promoting its long-term stability and economic independence through integrated development cooperation. On the other hand, by enabling social spaces for reflection, we promote the development of a systemic understanding of global interrelationships in our home country of Germany, which we understand as part of the global North. Only when both are brought together long-term change can really happen.

We believe that good concepts must be supported. At the same time, innovation should not be forgotten. Innovative concepts often have a hard time getting capital in the nonprofit sector because they are difficult to explain and prove to donors. As a foundation, we see it as our task to promote such innovative approaches that subsequently produce multipliers of change. The focus is always on networking people and organizations, because cooperation is an underestimated strength of the human kind.

The selection of our projects is not based on a regional focus, but on the impact of the project. Measuring impact is difficult, and the more systemic an approach is, the harder it is to measure in the short term. We therefore use the IOOI model to assess the impact of our project partners:

Input – Output – Outcome – Impact

Input/resources
What resources do we use?

financial resources

know how & strategic sparring

networking

Output/support
What type of support do we provide?

integrated development cooperation

reflection spaces / awareness spaces or awareness raising spaces

Outcome target group
What kind of change do we achieve in our target group?

strengthening the Global South/ mindset change/ social transformation

Impact of society
What kind of changes do we achieve on a societal level?

creating global justice

bringing about systemic change for a fairer world

We apply the model to the funding of all projects. In this way, we ensure that we are not satisfied with the use of our own resources (input) or with the provision of services (output), but that all projects achieve a demonstrable change in the target group (outcome). The overarching effect at the societal level (impact) is influenced by other, external factors and is therefore fundamentally difficult to measure in concrete terms, even over many years. From the “outcome” level onward, we can therefore speak of the impact achieved, which is illustrated in the following diagram:

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