When I was appointed Secretary General of the Finnish Cultural Foundation in 2003, I was only the fifth person to hold the reins of that wealthy organisation since its establishment just before World War II. Although I was loath to leave my University career, this unique vantage point on the Finnish arts and sciences proved irresistible. Donations from almost 200,000 Finns formed the founding capital of the Finnish Cultural Foundation in 1939. Since then it has grown into one of the largest foundations in Europe, and would it be significant even by US standards. It was a vast mental leap to move from writing grant proposals to approving them. The composer Jean Sibelius might have alluded to this difference with his comment that businessmen are better company, as artists only want to talk about money.

One might think that handing out money without consideration is an easy job – and so it might well be, particularly if one doesn't much care what the money is ultimately used for. However, if the criterion for success is the effective use of funds for the benefit of Finnish culture, the task gets much more complicated. An additional difficulty is that there is no consensus on what is good culture; opinions differ widely.

Has my background as a classicist provided me with some tangible benefit in the Finnish Cultural Foundation? I doubt it, even if a classical education does still provide something of an aura of sophistication. Perhaps far-sightedness is more important: the further back into the past you are accustomed to looking, the further into the future you will consider the consequences of your actions. It is quite appropriate for the Foundation to consider the significance of matters over a timeframe of decades or centuries.

From the Foundation you can end up in many fascinating places, such as the Supervisory Boards of the Finnish National Opera or the WWF, or the organising board of the Finnish Science Forum. The Hague Club of executives of major European foundations has given me friends from around the world. Even outside Finland it seems to be common to recruit foundation executives from academia rather than business.

“How do you decide who gets a grant?” Yle Kulttuuri, December 1, 2014. Finnish Broadcasting Company Arts Editor Tuula Viitaniemi interviewing the Secretary General of the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Included is a clip of the FBC programme A story of money and values – 75 years of the Finnish Cultural Foundation (in Finnish)