Fundación Anesvad

Fundación Anesvad

Founded in Bilbao in 1968, Fundación Anesvad is a health-focused Spanish foundation whose founding conviction — that Neglected Tropical Diseases are a proxy for systemic exclusion — still dictates its capital allocation and program design. Its board is chaired by Garbiñe Biurrun Mancisidor, a magistrate who presides over the Social Chamber of the Basque Country High Court of Justice. The foundation's endowment originates from a legacy trust; the organization operates independently of any single corporate sponsor or government ministry. Anesvad pursues a blended deployment model that spans direct field operations, grant-making, and a growing impact-investment portfolio governed by ESG and SRI mandates. Programmatically, the foundation anchors on Neglected Tropical Diseases — leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, Buruli ulcer, yaws — through public-health system strengthening in rural Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Togo. In parallel, it funds economic-enablement programs, including school-based water, sanitation, and health-education infrastructure through its Escuelas Saludables initiative. In Spain, the foundation runs an SRI financial portfolio, maintains an investment property portfolio, and incubates related cultural projects such as the Virtual NTD Art Gallery and the Elssie Ansareo Photography Collection. Iñigo Lasa serves as Director General, overseeing a team of roughly 47 professionals split between Bilbao headquarters and a Madrid office. Anesvad is a member of Impact Europe and SpainNAB, and was the first Spanish foundation to become a UNPRI signatory — making it structurally distinct among European health endowments. In May 2024, the foundation used its presence at the World Health Assembly in Geneva to advocate for universal health coverage that explicitly includes skin-related Neglected Tropical Diseases (per the firm, May 2024). Anesvad's architecture blends an operating foundation with an asset owner — it runs programs directly while managing an endowment that pursues impact investments. That dual posture lets it combine long-duration programmatic commitments with the liquidity management and reporting discipline of an institutional allocator. Its governance separates the Board of Trustees, led by Biurrun, from the executive management committee, and its affiliation with the WHO adds a multilateral policy layer that few foundations of its size possess.