Establishing a non-profit with e-residency

Establishing an Estonia based non-profit is possible with e-residency but there are differences between establishing a non-profit and a company (OU type). When establishing a company then everything can be done online in the company registration portal and no knowledge of Estonian is required. With the non-profit some other aspects are important:

• Along with application to establish you need to annex the founding agreement and the articles of association - they need to be in Estonian and cannot be composed in the company portal. So they need to be annexed as separate files;

• A non-profit needs at least 2 founders;

• A non-profit still needs a contact person if the management is outside of Estonia;

• The foundation can still all be done online using digital signatures;

• A non-profit has similar reporting obligations (such as the annual report) as a normal company.

A non-profit can be established for certain activities that need to be explained in the articles of association. The main rule is that the main activity of a non-profit cannot be to make a profit through economic activities.