La Caixa Foundation will invest 4 billion until 2030

Fundación La Caixa gives new impetus to its social, cultural, and educational initiatives. With the aim of responding to current societal challenges, the entity plans to invest up to 4 billion euros in the next five years, which will be mainly allocated to its social actions. An increase in investment that is part of the foundation's new Strategic Plan 2025 - 2030, titled Creer para transformar (Believe to transform).

With this new roadmap, the entity will intensify its social and scientific lines, increasing its budget by more than 20% by 2030. In fact, this year the entity already has a record budget, with 655 million euros—the highest investment in its entire history—, but in the next five years it plans to gradually increase it to reach 800 million euros by 2030, mainly thanks to dividends from companies in which CriteriaCaixa holds stakes.

This budget will be mostly allocated to the entity's social lines, which will concentrate approximately 60% of the total budget, as well as to boosting research and scholarships—with 20% of the total—and promoting culture, with the remaining 20%.

The president of Fundación La Caixa, Isidro Fainé, has assured that the new Strategic Plan remains "faithful to the essence and principles of the entity, and to its vocation of service to society and to people in situations of greater vulnerability," although "adapting to current challenges and needs."

The social sphere is the line of action that concentrates most of the entity's budget, which aims to reduce poverty and inequality, promote employment for people in vulnerable situations, or accompany the elderly. Among other actions, the entity promotes the CaixaProInfancia program, which since its launch, has served nearly 400,000 children and adolescents from families at risk of exclusion.

Through its Incorpora program, which has a network of almost 100,000 collaborating companies, it has facilitated nearly 450,000 employment contracts. On the other hand, it also accompanies patients with advanced diseases through a team of more than 320 professionals distributed across more than 170 hospitals in Spain and Portugal.

But its action is not only concentrated in the Iberian Peninsula and goes further, as it also promotes international cooperation programs to benefit vulnerable populations in countries such as Africa, Asia or Latin America, as well as promoting the alliance for child vaccination with GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance.

Among its programs for promoting research and scholarships, research actions in social sciences that address the main challenges of society and propose formulas for improvement and implementation of solutions to improve life expectancy and quality of life stand out. Throughout its history, the Foundation has supported 233 projects, registered 128 patents and created 50 companies, while promoting a scholarship program with more than 40 years of experience.

CriteriaCaixa will adapt its strategic plan to be "fully aligned" with the Foundation's principles

In addition to the new CaixaResearch Institute, the Foundation also has a large network of centers from which scientific research is promoted, such as IrsiCaixa, ISGlobal (Barcelona Institute for Global Health), VHIO (Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology), BBRC (Barcelonaβeta Brain Research Center), IRSJD (Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute) or GIMM (Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine, in Portugal).

Finally, the entity also promotes culture as a driver of social transformation through the Caixaforum network, which is present in 9 cities in Spain, a network to which the Caixaforum in Malaga will also be added in the coming years. These facilities received more than 3 million visitors last year, to which must be added those attending the Cap Roig festival or those who accessed Cosmocaixa. The Contemporary Art Collection of these centers, started in 1985, brings together 1,077 works by 454 artists.

Coordinated action with CriteriaCaixa

However, the 2025-2030 Strategic Plan proposed by "la Caixa" Foundation cannot be driven without the economic resources from investments executed through CriteriaCaixa ---its investment holding company---. For this reason, Fainé has emphasized the need for the Foundation and CriteriaCaixa to act "in a coherent and coordinated manner to achieve a common objective: the care and development of social work through the adequate management of its assets."

Thus, in the coming months, CriteriaCaixa will adapt its strategic plan, which foresees increasing the gross value of its assets to 40,000 million, so that it is "fully aligned" with the principles set by the Foundation. And it is that CriteriaCaixa is the great source of income for the Foundation, through dividends from its investees, such as Naturgy, Telefónica, ACS or Colonial.

In addition, the shared governance between the Foundation's Board of Trustees and CriteriaCaixa's Board of Directors will also be strengthened, which has recently incorporated the president of Naturgy, Francisco Reyes, after the departure of Àngel Simón.