You are Lucía Recuero, the first executive director of the Recuero Foundation in Spain's Corredor del Henares. Tomorrow, Tuesday 15 December 2026, the board — your father, your sister, your brother and your cousin — sets the policy for 2027. By ten o'clock you must bring a proposal on the 61 donations the foundation has always made.
The situation
Your father, Julián, set up the foundation in 2009 with 8% of Recuero Envases — the family's packaging company, about 540 employees in Azuqueca and Alcalá — and a financial portfolio: some €24 million that yields about €1.1 million net a year. It has worked the same way ever since: each trustee proposes the causes he or she knows. In 2026 that meant 61 donations of about €15,600, €950,000 in all, nearly all for one specific project and for one year: a parish, a palliative-care hospice, the town's football club, a friend's association in Madrid. The Recuero Gala in June cost another €120,000.
Going through the files, you counted about 38 people with a verified result — young people in a skilled job, older people still living safely at home: almost €28,900 of spending for each. Your draft strategy concentrates the foundation on two areas of the Corredor, with a written theory of change: young people into skilled work through dual vocational training, and older people who live alone. Any new strategy is paid for out of the same €1.1 million.
The grantees complain that they cannot hire or plan with money that expires after twelve months. Every trustee knows his or her causes by name. Julián wants his name on something that lasts; your sister Ane, the company's chief executive, wants the foundation to help Recuero's standing in the Corredor without turning into its communications department.