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.
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