The Himalaya Foundation was established in Taipei in 1990 as a corporate foundation. Ever since its establishment, the foundation has been active in promoting the development of Taiwan's nonprofit sector, whether it is by organizing academic conferences, conducting research and surveys, translating and publishing major foreign publications on the NPO sector or engaging in exchange with international nonprofit organizations. While Taiwan NPOs stand in the frontline to answer growing social needs, the role of the Himalaya Foundation is to provide these NPOs with the knowledge and tools necessary to strengthen their management capacity, and thus help them to face social challenges. Over the years, the Himalaya Foundation has developed into an information resource center for individuals and organizations in and outside Taiwan who wish to better understand the local NPO sector. The Foundation focuses its work on three major areas:

Mapping out Taiwan's third sector

Since 1991, the Himalaya Foundation has been mapping out the development of Taiwan's third sector by regularly publishing the Directory of Major Foundations in Taiwan, which has now become an indispensable reference for people in the nonprofit, government or academic sectors, as well as by maintaining an extensive database of nonprofit organizations. Our continued efforts have made us a reference for anyone who wishes to understand Taiwan NPOs.

In order to keep abreast of the quantitative growth and qualitative development of the sector, we will pursue our data collection to maintain and expand our NPO database. We also track evolving trends in the third sector through various research projects, which allow us to better understand the changing needs of NPOs, as well as the difficulties they meet in their regular operations, and thus develop appropriate tools to help them meet the challenges they face in their daily operations. 

Capacity building for NPO workers

At the basis of our work is the deeply engrained belief that knowledge is the only true and lasting wealth. We believe in the necessity of passing one's own knowledge to others and cultivating talent, which is why our Foundation has organized over the years many workshops and conferences specifically dealing with building the capacities of NPO workers in areas like fundraising or management, as well as with introducing Taiwan NPOs to new trends in philanthropy. This year, our approach to learning will become more systematic, as we will develop series of training programs both in a real classroom environment as well as in the virtual environment of E-Learning.

Our approach to learning has become more systematic, by developing series of training courses that combine the different perspectives of the academia, the NPO sector and the business sector, in order to encourage the exchange of know-how across sectors and thus constantly bring fresh new ideas into NPO work. Pluralistic learning methods (workshops, online classroom, online exchange platform, etc.) are used to encourage the active participation of the students, as well as interaction among the students themselves and with the teachers.

Strengthening the ability of NPOs to use Information Technology

After having accumulated more than ten years of experience in the third sector, the foundation firmly believes that Information Technology (IT) is one of the tools that Taiwan NPOs need to master. As such, the foundation has been striving to help NPOs improve their ability to use IT. In 2001, the Himalaya Foundation set up the NPO Development Center to provide IT services to nonprofit organizations and thus overcome the "digital divide" in the nonprofit world.

The Center hopes to help NPOs simplify their daily operations, reduce their operating costs and increase their work efficiency and quality thanks to the use of IT. By providing professional IT services such as the design of websites and management programs, we aim to assist NPOs in using Information and Internet technology to improve their core competencies such as fundraising, marketing, management and strategic planning. We have also developed professional Web based / CS software, and will organize training programs for IT personnel by using E-Learning methods to make this training widely available.

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