Guardian of the grail
Why Lancelot exists, where its means come from and what they make possible.
There are things a community needs that nobody pays for. A place to give birth. A room where someone can grow old in peace. A small school among the trees. A spring, a food forest, a power supply that hangs on no grid. They appear on no budget, because they yield nothing. They only keep people standing.
Lancelot was set up to carry exactly that. Not an association with members, not a business with profit, but a private foundation: means that belong to themselves and may be used only for a disinterested purpose. Whoever contributes gets nothing back. That is not a shortcoming of the form, that is the form.
The founder contributes the capital. Alongside that, the members of the Camelot investors club donate thirty per cent of their profit from the Round Tables to the foundation. Knights who invest together decided unanimously to give away almost a third of what they earn. What is earned on the market thus goes to what the market does not find profitable. Gifts, legacies and the proceeds of the foundation’s own land and buildings come on top.
Support goes to living communities and community groups, never to a person. A living community lives together and shares daily life; a community group organises or undertakes something together around a shared purpose. Both apply, the board assesses and recognises, and only then can support be requested. Every award is a decision, with an assessor, an opinion and a vote. What the foundation owns it can also lend: a piece of land, a building, a roof over a plan that finds shelter nowhere else.
The possibilities are open. A community that buys land which stays inside the foundation and outlives its generations. A place of care that need not turn a profit. Teaching and awareness that no one has to sell. A network of places that learn from one another, in Belgium and beyond.
The arms say what it is about. It is said that Lancelot laid down his sword beside a rose growing between the stones, and planted a lily beside it. The sword is the resolve to do what must be done, the rose the love from which communities arise, the lily the purity of a purpose that serves no one’s gain.