The NEAR Foundation is a non-profit, non-beneficiary foundation based in Switzerland. It supports community-driven innovation with a specific focus on open-source Web3 projects and tooling. The Foundation distributes grant funding to the NEAR ecosystem, coordinates governance among participants, educates people about the protocol, and helps foster an inclusive and open community. It seeks to combine the inclusive care of a community-driven NGO with the at-scale capabilities of a Silicon Valley startup.