About Us
Alkemio Foundation,
a think-do tank
From our base in The Hague, we are committed to helping change makers in The Netherlands and worldwide, succeed in their collective action efforts.
Alkemio’s origin story is from one of the toughest crisis of the 21st century - the COVID-19 pandemic. Our founders were part of Dutch public-private initiative to collectively overcome shared challenges.
We experienced how, despite the best intentions, the lack of a supportive digital infrastructure was constraining our collective action efforts.
Our communities depended on disparate tools, ad-hoc solutions, and algorithms putting the interests of large technology companies first.
We imagined a purpose-built alternative. With all the building blocks for excelling at collective action, and designed from first principles to put society’s interests first.
With technology as an enabler, we aimed to harness the human capacity, talent, and determination to solve societal challenges, and support their endeavours.
Purpose Guarantor
Protecting the mission
As our digital platform gained traction, it was necessary to further safeguard its purpose, align its ambition, and protect its users.
alkem.io became steward-owned and the Alkemio Foundation became the purpose guarantor of the digital platform.
Steward-Ownership
Balancing purpose alongside sustainable business
Steward-ownership is an ownership and governance model that ensures companies remain true to their purpose alongside ensuring business sustainability. Many successful businesses in Europe adopt this model, and momentum is growing for smaller purpose-driven companies. If you are interested to learn more about Alkemio and steward-ownership, this case study from Purpose Economy is a helpful starting point.
If you are based in the Netherlands, and steward-ownership excites you, join our community here.
Our Governance
Board of Directors
Incorporated as a Stitching under Dutch Law, Alkemio Foundation is governed by our Board of Directors.
The members of our Board of Directors are currently the Stewards of the Alkemio platform.
We are currently undertaking the process to expand the number of stewards to increase diversity of thought and representation and enable the careful evolution of the platform.
The Roles of Stewards are to:
- safeguard the purpose of the company
- take decisions on the strategic path for the organization
- provide directions on the operational aspects, including governance, financial, and legal
- allocate dividends received by Alkemio Foundation from the company towards achieving the purpose
Neil Smyth
René Honig
Our Structure
Introducing Alkemio’s Structure
Steward-ownership for smaller companies is a nascent and evolving concept. We are learning by doing, and have benefitted from inputs from other trailblazing organisations, including We Are Stewards, and Purpose. We also want to help other organisation navigate this path; to help facilitate this knowledge sharing, we have publicly shared all relevant resources. For a detailed understanding of our structure, please head to this page.
