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 500,000, 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 doubled by PANDION.

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:

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:

Our 5 funding areas are based on the considerations outlined at the beginning regarding the interplay of solutions in the global South & in the global North as well as the creation of multipliers:

These 5 funding areas include a variety of projects, each of which must present their impact model in their project application to us. As a rule, we fund the projects or the project partners over several years. In doing so, we commit certain funding amounts in advance, which the project partners can call upon when they reach corresponding milestones. On the one hand, this enables the partner organizations to plan for the long term, and on the other hand, it provides them with an incentive to continuously review the effectiveness of their measures.

Based on the IOOI model, let’s now take a look at our 5 funding areas:

Education is the basis for change in every area of life. Depending on the location of the education, however, the focus is different. For example, for an education in rural Africa, it may be essential to provide the graduate with the skills for local self-employment due to the lack of available employment, while an economic university education in Germany should be holistic and respectful of planetary boundaries.

Social entrepreneurs are mostly people who live in a place and want to solve local problems there. Their approach is fundamentally entrepreneurial and is intended to be self-sustaining in the long term. This prevents dependence on donations and enables the approach to be scaled. These concepts often need start-up funding to be able to grow on their own afterwards and are often more resilient to problems and more effective than the work of external people without local knowledge.

Living in dignity, as well as in peace and freedom, are basic requirements that should be met for everyone. Unfortunately, this is often not the case because poor people usually lack access to the legal system and independent sources of information are often not available.

Many development cooperation projects have proven to be ineffective, especially in rural regions of the global South, because several basic requirements are lacking there and an improvement in the situation only occurs when these interact. Therefore, we support projects that address regional habitats & ecosystems holistically.

The way goods are produced and the way we consume often has a massive impact on people, animals and the environment in other parts of the world through supply chains and waste. Fairly produced products and transparent consumption is therefore a huge lever for solving the problems in our globally interconnected world.

One possible target image of our way of acting consists in the so-called “Donut Economy”. The concept envisions an ideal area for a safe and just life of mankind within two circles: