What we are, and what we are not

An association that intends to ask universities, companies and public bodies for their time should answer the awkward questions before it asks for anything, rather than after. Why it exists is argued elsewhere. This entry sets out the legal identity, the limits and the money. It is dated, and it is meant to be quoted back.

The legal identity

SkillHeart is the public name of the Asociación para el Desarrollo del Talento Tecnológico y la Empleabilidad Digital, in English the Association for the Development of Technological Talent and Digital Employability.

• Legal nature: nonprofit association constituted in Spain.
• Entered in the National Register of Associations under number 633639.
• Registration decision dated 20 July 2026.
• Registered office in Palma de Mallorca, Illes Balears, Spain.
• Scope: national, with a European and international vocation.

Those five lines are the entire legal identity. Anything presented as SkillHeart that does not trace back to them is not the association.

What the association is not

None of the following describes SkillHeart, and none of them becomes true later without this entry being corrected.

• Not a temporary employment agency, and not a job board.
• Not a recruitment agency in the conventional sense, for reasons set out under the money below.
• Not a technology consultancy.
• Not an academy that sells courses. Participants are never charged.
• Not an accelerator that takes money from founders.
• Not a channel for cheap labour, and not a supplier of free work to private companies.
• Not a guarantor of employment, and not an issuer of official qualifications or state-recognised assessments.
• Not an operating organisation at scale. Nothing is running yet.

Two of those need more than a denial, because the association does intermediate and saying otherwise would be false.

How the association earns money, and from whom

The association charges neither the people it trains nor the universities it works with. It charges companies. Both halves have to be said, because either one alone is misleading.

Digital Readiness, the programme furthest along, ends with introductions to European companies that engage participants as independent professionals. Three conditions define that arrangement and all three are settled. The company pays and the participant never does. The money for the work does not pass through the association: the company pays the professional directly and the association invoices its fee separately. And the format of the collaboration is deliberately left open, because a single full-time client is a disguised employment relationship and how that case would be handled has not been decided.

What the company is offered is access to validated people. It is never a saving on labour cost, and that is not a matter of wording. A model built on cost reduction is the extractive model the association has ruled out, and it is also indefensible on its own terms: if the argument were price, anyone with cheaper people wins and the training stops mattering. Cohorts stay small because the association intends to vouch for each participant by name, and nobody can do that for a hundred thousand people.

Because the outcome is independent collaboration rather than employment, there is no employment relationship to intermediate, so the association is not required to register as a Spanish placement agency. It also means no promise of employment is being made, because there is no employment to promise.

Launch Lab works differently, and the difference is worth stating precisely. There the association invests rather than teaches: training, tools, accompaniment and sometimes the idea. In exchange it takes a share of what results, which may be intellectual property, a stake in the company or a share of revenue for an agreed period. That is a partnership rather than a charge, and nobody pays anything to take part. It is agreed and signed before the work starts, because who ends up owning what is exactly the thing that cannot live in small print.

Nothing the association earns reaches its members. It is a nonprofit, and the surplus is reinvested in the programmes. Beyond fees, the funding mix is donations, grants, sponsorship and contributions in kind.

Governance, and what is not finished

The governance structure and the board are being constituted. The bylaws are not yet published. The activity report and the annual accounts do not exist, because there is no closed financial year to report on.

The association has committed to publishing, progressively: its legal identity, its bylaws, its board, its mission, an activity report, accounts or a financial summary, its funders and its selection criteria. Each one will be published once it is done, and not before.

No date is attached to that list. With the first closed financial year is a commitment that can be kept. A date chosen today because it reads well is not.

What can reasonably be demanded

Publishing limits is cheap unless somebody can act on them. So, concretely: the association can be asked to show its register entry, to confirm that a participant was not charged, and to say where a programme actually stands rather than where it is going. Those questions have answers today. Ask them.

Everything above is dated. If it stops being accurate, the correction belongs here and the entry will carry the date it was corrected. What is possible right now is a separate entry, and a shorter one.

In short

• SkillHeart is a nonprofit association registered in Spain, National Register of Associations no. 633639, with its registration decision dated 20 July 2026.
• It is not an employment agency, a job board, a course business, an accelerator that charges founders or a supplier of cheap labour, and it guarantees no employment and issues no official qualifications.
• Participants and universities are never charged. Companies are, for introductions to independent professionals, and the money for the work never passes through the association.
• Launch Lab is an investment rather than a charge: the association takes intellectual property, equity or a revenue share, agreed and signed before the work begins.