The Fabric of Giving 2025: Public-Benefit Foundation Data in Europe
Collecting data on European public-benefit foundations is crucial for understanding the scale and impact of the philanthropy sector in Europe. The Fabric of Giving 2025 report reveals that Europe has 175,000 foundations with assets totalling €519 billion and annual expenditures of €76 billion, highlighting the sector’s significant contribution to societal developments.
Overview
The latest iteration of Philea’s public-benefit foundations in Europe report, “The Fabric of Giving 2025” expands upon the 2023 dataset, with the new data being collected primarily from national associations of donors and experts in the sector and covers 34 European countries, including 23 EU Member States. Based on a more rigorous and consistent data collection methodology than previous editions, both quantitative and qualitative data was gathered to supplement the numerical data, but this time in great detail.
The aim of this study is to present a snapshot of the state of play of European public-benefit foundations as clearly as possible. Having an up-to-date analysis of the philanthropic sector is vital to understanding the true scale and capabilities of the sector, as well as for informing policymakers and the general public.
While this is the most comprehensive study of its kind to date, several limitations remain, which are detailed in the full publication. These include differing definitions for foundations, challenges with disaggregated data, lack of continuity in some data and an absence of financial data in countries where foundations are not required to publish annual accounts/reports.
The 23 EU Member States included in this study are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. The 11 non-EU countries included in the dataset are Albania, Andorra, Georgia, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Türkiye, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
Background
This report is part of Philea’s commitment to demonstrating the size, diversity and scale of European institutional philanthropy to a range of stakeholders. While data on the sector is not standardised across Europe, Philea has established clear guidelines through which data was collected and assessed with the intention of maintaining consistency across an otherwise scattered and diverse sector.
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