Our Response to the covid-19 Crisis

Following guidelines from the WHO and national authorities, all our Rome and Barcelona-based staff is working from home since March 10 and will continue to do so for the time being for the purpose of containing the spread of COVID-19. 

The Peretti Foundations remain operational. We are trying our best to respond to the current crisis, monitor and mitigate its impact on our grantees and their programmes.

The Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation has signed the European Philanthropy Statament on Covid-19, coordinated by DAFNE and the EFC and open for signatures from all funders active in Europe.

This is the Statement:

We stand together in the spirit of European solidarity

We, the signatories, recognise that the COVID-19 outbreak is an exceptional event that will have an unprecedented impact on civil society organisations and NGOs across Europe and throughout the world.  We want to offer our reassurance that we stand together during this testing time, bringing our spirit of European solidarity to this worldwide crisis.

We are committed to being good partners and a source of meaningful support during the coming weeks and months so that civil society groups can focus on the vital work of supporting some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.  We understand that there will be times when staff and volunteers will not be available, when beneficiaries may need services to be provided in different ways, or when systems need to be flexible to ensure that needs are met.

If your community, services or organisation are affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, and you receive grant funding from us, we are committed to:

• Adapting activities – we recognise that you may experience difficulties achieving some of the outputs or outcomes we agreed for your grant during the outbreak, and would like to be able to maintain our grant payments to you at originally-agreed levels during this period, so please have a conversation with us if you are affected in this way
• Discussing dates – we don’t want to add pressure, so if you think you will struggle to meet a reporting deadline please get in touch with us so that we can agree a more realistic time for you to get things to us wherever possible
• Financial flexibility – we know you may need to use your funding to help cover sickness, purchase equipment, or deliver services differently, and we will be reasonable if you need to move money between budget headings to ensure your work can continue
• Listening to you – we are here if you want to talk to us about the situation you’re facing, but we’ll wait for you to call us so that these conversations are at the right time for you.