The Oak Foundation is a charitable foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

The foundation was founded in 1983 by billionaire Alan M. Parker, cofounder of the duty-free company DFS Group.

In addition to its headquarters in Switzerland, the Oak Foundation has offices in Denmark, the UK, the US and Zimbabwe.

The foundation makes grants in eight major program areas plus two country-level programs (in Denmark and Zimbabwe). In 2025, the Oak Foundation reported making roughly one thousand grants in 33 countries totaling USD 383 million.

The program areas are:

  • Environment
  • Climate
  • Preventing Child Sexual Abuse
  • Housing and Homelessness
  • International Human Rights
  • Issues Affecting Women
  • Learning Differences
  • Special Interest (trustee-driven grants outside the other program areas)

Historically, most of Oak's grant making has been for specific programs but has been shifting recently to making core, unrestricted grants to organizations.

Oak Foundation's support for issues such as climate justice and human rights has attracted criticism from conservative organizations and governments such as Russia's, where in January 2026 it was announced that the Oak Foundation was classified as undesirable in Russia under the Russian undesirable organizations law.

External links

  • European Foundation Center