A foundation is a non-membership NPO, established by citizens and (or) legal entities on the basis of voluntary property contributions and pursuing charitable, cultural, educational or other social, socially oriented goals.

Though the legal framework does not stipulate various types of foundations, informally, a few kinds of foundations can be distinguished: public foundations (operating foundations), private foundations, corporate foundations.

A feature of a foundation in Russia is that they are supposed to mainly use voluntary property contributions to achieve their goals and cannot directly carry out entrepreneurial activities; in order to do that, foundations have to create special business entities or participate in them. Charitable foundations stand separately and are regulated by a separate law.

Foundations must report on their activities to the Ministry of Justice.

An ANO is a non-membership NPO, created on the basis of citizens' property contributions and (or) legal entities in order to provide services in the areas of education, health, culture, science and other areas of non-profit activities. The particular feature of this NPO type, which distinguishes it from, for example, a foundation, is that an ANO is created to provide a service and therefore has the right to directly engage in an entrepreneurial activity and use the income received to achieve its goals. ANOs must report on their activities to the Ministry of Justice. 

Corporate philanthropy plays a significant role in the development of the Russian philanthropic sector, which can be carried out both through companies and corporate foundations. 2020 Leaders in Corporate Philanthropy research indicates that 41 Russian companies in a wide range of industries spent more than RUB 50 bln (USD 688 mln) on charity and social support. According to another research, the corporate segment accounts for about 50% of institutional spending on charitable and social projects, with the total amount of external social investments of the companies included in the authoritative Russian rating of RBC-500 in 2018 is RUB 197-250 bln (USD 3-7 bln) a year.

In legal terms, companies may carry out any form of charitable activities having no obligation to report on it. Corporate foundations should be registered as a non-profit organisation.

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