ADVOCATING FOR & CONNECTING THE SECTOR
We want philanthropy to thrive in an enabling environment and be well connected to key partners.
We champion the interests of our members vis-à-vis the EU and multilateral organisations. We work towards an enabling operating environment for European philanthropy by monitoring and analysing policy and regulatory trends at national, European and international level, and engage around this agenda with policymakers and other stakeholders. We position philanthropy as a key actor on societal issues and facilitate strategic engagement and collaboration opportunities, including public-private partnerships.
In 2024, we continued to build our analysis hub to support our monitoring of policy developments for the operating environment for philanthropy, and to inform our responses to them. Our Legal Affairs Committee (35 individuals from across our membership) supports the team in this work, which is further strengthened through our network of partnerships and representation roles. A particular focus during this period included the impact of EU and international money laundering and terrorism financing policy.
Highlights:
We published case studies with Transnational Giving Europe on obstacles to cross-border philanthropy. “Removing Obstacles to Cross-Border Philanthropy: The Time Is Now” provides true case examples of foundations and donors impacted by these obstacles and delves into the broader legal and fiscal contexts behind each barrier.
We began updating 40 country profiles with the support of national experts which will lead to a new edition of our publication, “Comparative Highlights of Foundation Laws”. These profiles and the comparative highlights bridge the national and European contexts and highlight universal issues and challenges. They enable an evidence-based dialogue among our members and, in particular, national associations of foundations and donors so that good practices can be shared and replicated and challenges can be advocated against in other countries.
Over 100 participants convened in Brussels for EuroPhilantopics 2024, “New EU Mandate, New Partnerships with Philanthropy”. EuroPhilantopics is our annual policy and advocacy platform for identifying common goals, sharing best practices and forging partnerships to address shared challenges collaboratively.
Coinciding with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities and GivingTuesday, the event addressed EU priorities and the role philanthropy can play in moving towards a society that works for people and the planet at a time when many individuals feel left behind.
We ensured that philanthropy was centre stage at the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU during the Social Economy Week in March in Liege, with a follow-up session on cross-border philanthropy with the EU High-Level Working Party on Tax Questions, held in May and co-organised with the King Baudouin Foundation.
We contributed to the first Irish National Policy on Philanthropy, a policy that shows that philanthropy matters and has an important role to play. Implementation of the policy will need to include consideration of fiscal measures to ensure that philanthropy has the space to operate and bring the objectives of the policy to reality.
We continued to engage around the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the EU on current policy developments to reduce money laundering and terrorism financing (Europe and third countries) to ensure that policies are rights-based, fit for purpose, proportionate to the level of threat and respect fundamental rights and values. Our input resulted in positive changes for the non-profit sector, specifically in the FATF standards relevant to NPOs and related polices.
We issued a statement of concern on the “Transparency of Foreign Influence” law in Georgia which threatens hundreds of NGOs and media outlets at a time of declining democracy in Europe and worldwide. We stand in solidarity with the citizens, media and civil society organisations fighting against this troubling law.
We secured measures in the Social Economy Action Plan, specifically for foundations and philanthropy, such as a call to Member States to overcome barriers to cross-border philanthropy and the issuing of templates and guidelines at EU level.
Enlarging and promoting the toolbox for philanthropy
We facilitated debates and helped raise awareness of the importance of impact investing and produced a policy briefing on the subject with Impact Europe. Within the context of the InvestEU programme, we continued to contribute to the design of a co-investment facility with different expert conversations involving the sector, the European Commission and EIB/EIF.
We also continued to explain the benefits of the enterprise foundation model in Europe and facilitated peer-exchanges for our European Network of Enterprise Foundations.
Facilitating dialogue and collaboration
In 2024, we became a European partner of The Partnering Initiative, which aims to scale up effective multi-sector collaboration globally, collecting cases and generating learnings from Public Philanthropy Private Partnerships (PPPP). We also continued to be an active member of Social Economy Europe (SEE) and worked for a continuation of the European Parliament Social Economy Intergroup.
On 1 October we organised an event at the European Parliament to release our policy recommendations on how to make it easier for foundations to do impact investing on the programme and endowment side. We also embarked on a strategic collaboration with Impact Europe around the topic of impact investing and foundations.
Partnerships
Throughout the year, we collaborated strategically with civil society and positioned philanthropy as part of the wider civil society and, in the context of our seat in the EESC CSO Liaison Group, we joined calls for a European Civil Society Strategy.
Together with the European Commission, we organised public and philanthropic donor dialogues around democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights with DG Justice, EEA & Norway grants, USAID and the philanthropy sector.
“Philanthropy is about caring, sharing and daring. This makes the sector such an important part of our work to achieve prosperity. That’s one thing we share: Generosity in the public purpose.”
Kerstin Jorna, Director-General for DG Internal Market, European Commission
