“Michel Tuor, my husband, spent his entire career in Geneva. While his success allowed us to secure our children’s future, it mostly gave us the financial means to help others. Sharing seemed obvious to us, and not doing so felt indecent,” explains Sylvie Tuor. “We were already in the habit of making donations, but it was done in a disorganized way. We wanted to structure our actions, which is why we created the Hubert Tuor Foundation in 2013,” says Sylvie. “Although the Foundation mainly rests on my shoulders, the whole family is involved: my husband, my mother-in-law, and my daughters. The latter may wish to carry the torch in the future and embrace this opportunity to give back.”

The Tuor family foundation bears the name of Michel Tuor’s father, both as a source of inspiration and as a homage. “He was a person filled with goodness, altruism, and generosity,” continues Sylvie Tuor, “We wanted to do something in his likeness. Originally from Graubünden, he worked all his life in the hotel trade. But in reality, he didn’t have the means to study the subject that was close to his heart: architecture. We decided therefore that one focus of the foundation that bears his name should be to support people who wish to study.”

Managing a “big heart” calls for a degree of organization and discipline. “We didn’t want to be just another foundation, and so in the year prior to setting up the foundation we devoted lots of time and energy to identifying genuine needs. We had to have a focus for our activities. We chose education and training as the framework for projects in the fields of medicine, science, and technology, both in Switzerland and abroad.”

Coming from the world of finance, the Tuors are familiar with the concept of return on investment. In their case, it’s not simply a question of giving for today, but of building for the longer term, with a view above all to ensuring that beneficiaries, if and when they can and in one form or another, give back in turn what they have received. “This is the concept of renewable philanthropy. Either the project generates profits which are reinvested in new projects, or the beneficiary, at some point and in one way or another, gives a helping hand to the foundation by returning the favor.”