The Endeavor Foundation (EF, Formerly Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation) is a New York-based foundation that for decades has been supporting liberal arts education in the USA as well as Europe. Its activities in Europe go back to early 1990s mainly in Central Europe and also Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania. The EF created and supported the Educational Leadership Program (ELP) that in 1996 organized a conference in Budapest for about 100 university Rectors and Deans from Central Europe and about 20 Presidents and Provosts from various US Liberal Arts colleges. The aim was to discuss in the relaxed atmosphere of Hotel Gellert the nature and virtues of Liberal Arts education. Out of this Conference emerged a network of Central European institutions called Artes Liberales, whose mission was to promote the liberal arts model of education in Central Europe. Initially, there were representatives from Bulgaria (Julia Stefanova), Czech Republic (Jan Sokol), Estonia (Rein Raud), Latvia (Petaris Lakis), Poland (Jerzy Axer), Romania (Cesar Birzea), Slovakia (Samuel Abrahám) and Ukraine (Serhiv Ivaniuk). From the US side, the ELP representatives were Nicholas Farnham and Adam Yarmolinsky.

In 1998, the second Budapest conference took place and was also attended by Ms. Julie Johnson Kidd, the President of the Endeavor Foundation who originally initiated the cooperation with the universities in Central Europe. . Since 1998, the Endeavor Foundation has been directly helping to promote Liberal Arts education in Central Europe. It has supported, among others, European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA) in Berlin and Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA) in Slovakia.

The activities of Artes Liberales in the 1990s were laudable but limited, because, before the Bologna Agreement was signed, there was no Bachelor Degree format – the framework required by liberal arts model – in Continental Europe. Hence, besides those few institutions involved in Artes Liberales, only a very few liberal arts programs emerged in Lithuania, Russia and the Netherlands. Thanks to the Bologna Process the Bachelor Degree was established throughout Europe and the Liberal Arts model could commence after the year 2000.

The Liberal Arts model has developed in parallel in Central Europe and in the Netherlands since the late 1990s. The cooperation between the two groups led to the creation of ECOLAS in 2007 as an initiative of Hans Adriaansens (Utrecht University College and Roosevelt Academy/UCR) and Samuel Abrahám (Society for Higher Learning and BISLA). Subsequently, Laurent Boetsch (then the President of ECLA) joined in the Executive Board. ECOLAS is based and registered in Bratislava, Slovakia as a non-profit organization (registration No. VVS/1-900/90-29845, March 3, 2007).

The Endeavor Foundation has been supporting ECOLAS since 2015 with annual grants as well as close cooperation on planning and operation. Although President of an American Foundation, Ms. Kidd has been interested and supportive of the status of liberal arts education in Europe. She perceived in ECOLAS a network capable of promoting a truly liberal education that would enhance democratic values, facilitate cooperation among various European Liberal Arts programs, and initiate a wider dialogue between academics and students between Europe and the USA.