Belgium

Transnational Giving Europe

The private initiative Transnational Giving Europe Network was established in 1999, with its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

Introduction to Philanthropy Research in Belgium

By Ann-Sophie Bouckaert, Sanne Holvoet, Joke Persyn and Freek Van Baelen

Philanthropy research in Belgium remains fragmented. No single study or database provides a comprehensive overview of charitable giving across the country. Available evidence comes from several academic institutions, foundations, fundraising associations, government agencies and transparency platforms. Many studies have historically focused on Flanders rather than Belgium as a whole, making comparisons between regions and datasets difficult.

The Research Centre for Sustainable Organizations at HOGENT University of Applied Sciences and Arts is an important academic centre for research on charitable giving. For more than a decade, its work concentrated mainly on Flanders because of funding limitations. In 2024, HOGENT expanded its research on individual giving to cover the entire Belgian population.

HOGENT initially studied fundraising and individual giving from the perspective of nonprofit organisations. In cooperation with testament.be, it has also monitored legacy income throughout Belgium for nearly ten years. Since 2019, the research centre has studied donor behaviour and developed a model identifying five donor profiles. It also conducts research on corporate fundraising, partnerships and the giving behaviour of small and medium-sized enterprises.

The King Baudouin Foundation is one of Belgium’s largest philanthropic institutions. It supports almost 5,000 organisations and individuals annually and manages approximately 1,500 philanthropic funds established by individuals, families and companies. Since 2011, the Foundation and the Itinera Institute have published the Belgian Philanthropy Barometer and Index, which combine indicators of philanthropic activity with survey data on attitudes towards giving.

The Foundation also established Because.eu, which provides information on more than 33,000 Belgian social-profit organisations. It participates in Transnational Giving Europe, the Myriad alliance for international giving and the Belgian Federation of Philanthropic Foundations. Much of its underlying data, however, is proprietary.

At KU Leuven, researchers in the Faculty of Economics and Business study nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Their research addresses subjects including fundraising ethics, face-to-face fundraising, storytelling and the ways in which the vulnerability of beneficiaries is represented in fundraising communications. The group brings together expertise from marketing, economics, political science and psychology.

Other organisations contribute data and research on specific parts of Belgian philanthropy. Ethical Fundraising represents 125 nonprofit organisations; Donorinfo publishes governance and financial information on more than 230 charities; Fundraisers Forum produces a national Public Generosity Barometer; and Fundraisers Belgium provides research, training and professional resources. Testament.be promotes charitable bequests, while ACODEV and ngo-federatie publish financial information on organisations working in international solidarity and development cooperation.

Overview of Giving in Belgium

Giving by individuals

HOGENT’s first representative nationwide study found that 61.9% of Belgians made at least one donation in 2024. The average amount across the entire population, including non-donors, was €79.09. Among people who donated, the average was €132.28.

Health was the most frequently supported area, receiving donations from 48% of respondents. It was followed by environment, nature and animal welfare at 28.9%, child and youth welfare at 23.1%, and social welfare and social work at 20.7%. International solidarity was supported by 18.7% of respondents, while 18.9% donated to organisations assisting people with disabilities.

Administrative tax data provide a different perspective. Belgian residents can receive a tax reduction for eligible donations of more than €40 to recognised organisations. In 2022, Statbel recorded 1,035,816 taxpayers making €362.1 million in tax-deductible donations. These figures do not include donations below the threshold, donations to organisations without recognised status or donations for which no tax certificate was claimed.

Donorinfo’s analysis of tax certificates indicates that the total value of certificates issued in 2023 was almost €523 million. Approximately €372.8 million related to individual donations and €150.1 million to corporate donations. The average value per certificate rose from €139.20 in 2019 to €153.40 in 2023.

The King Baudouin Foundation’s 2023 Philanthropy Barometer found that 56% of Belgians had donated during 2022, compared with 63% in 2019. Health and medical research remained the most popular cause, followed by humanitarian aid and poverty reduction. Inflation and financial pressures were commonly cited by those who reduced their giving. Younger donors were more likely than older groups to report increasing their donations.

Public support for philanthropy nevertheless remains strong. Nearly eight in ten Belgians consider philanthropy important, while around three in ten regard it as essential. A large majority believe that philanthropy contributes to a better world, and approximately seven in ten believe that companies should assume greater responsibility in this area.

Bequest giving

HOGENT has tracked charitable bequests since 2016 in cooperation with testament.be, using data extending back to 2010. In 2023, 305 charities participated in the study. Of these, 174 organisations received at least one bequest, reporting combined legacy income of approximately €200.4 million.

Legacy income is highly concentrated. The average amount received by organisations with bequest income was approximately €1.15 million, but the median was much lower at €135,294. This difference reflects the effect of a limited number of exceptionally large bequests.

Health organisations received around 35% of the bequest income recorded in the study. International solidarity received 17%, education and research 13%, social welfare 11%, and environment, nature and animal welfare approximately 9%. These percentages should be interpreted carefully because the number and composition of participating organisations vary between fields.

Fundraisers Forum recorded approximately €180.9 million in bequest income among 288 organisations in 2023. Donorinfo recorded €55 million among the organisations on its platform, while NGOs working in international solidarity reported €52.1 million. The datasets overlap and therefore cannot be added together.

According to the King Baudouin Foundation’s Philanthropy Barometer, approximately 13% of Belgians have made a will. One in four of these wills reportedly includes a charitable organisation.

Corporate giving

Recent information on corporate philanthropy comes primarily from a 2023 HOGENT study of small and medium-sized enterprises in Flanders and Brussels. The research distinguishes donations, for which companies expect no direct return, from sponsorships involving visibility or another benefit for the company.

Health was the most common field for corporate donations, supported by 21% of the surveyed companies. International solidarity and social welfare were each supported by 13%, while child and youth welfare received donations from 10%. Sports was the most common sponsorship field, selected by 28% of companies, illustrating the different motivations and patterns behind donations and commercial sponsorship.

The survey included 411 completed responses. Micro-enterprises were underrepresented compared with their actual share of the Belgian business population, so the findings cannot be treated as fully representative of all Belgian SMEs. The study nevertheless provides useful insights into how corporate giving is organised and what motivates companies to support nonprofit organisations.

Tax-certificate data analysed by Donorinfo show that the average eligible corporate donation increased from €1,275 in 2019 to €1,868 in 2023. Corporate tax certificates represented approximately €150 million in donations in 2023, although this covers only donations that qualified for and generated certificates.

Foundations

Belgian law distinguishes private foundations from public-benefit foundations. A foundation has no members and uses its assets to pursue a disinterested goal. Public-benefit status may be granted to foundations pursuing philanthropic, educational, cultural, religious, social or comparable public purposes.

A 2022 study by Philea, the King Baudouin Foundation and the Belgian Federation of Philanthropic Foundations analysed 668 Belgian foundations. However, available financial figures cover only part of foundation activity and should be regarded as lower-bound estimates. The data were drawn from the Belgian Central Balance Sheet Office, the Belgian Federation of Philanthropic Foundations, the King Baudouin Foundation’s Social Profit Data Trust and Philea’s legal profiles.

The National Lottery

Belgium’s National Lottery is owned by the Belgian state and operates under close ministerial and parliamentary supervision. Although it distributes substantial funding to public-benefit causes, it is not classified as a charity lottery in the ERNOP study because the allocation of funds is controlled by public authorities. Its contributions are therefore better understood as public funding rather than private philanthropy.

In 2023, the National Lottery returned €345 million to Belgian society. Of this, €200 million was distributed to organisations through subsidies determined by Royal Decree, while €145 million was paid to the state as a monopoly contribution. Approximately 1,200 organisations received support. Beneficiaries included organisations working in research, social welfare, sport, culture, poverty reduction, environmental protection and international development.

Overall Assessment

Unlike Austria, Belgium does not currently have a credible consolidated estimate of total philanthropic giving. The available datasets use different definitions, cover different years and populations, and combine survey responses with administrative and organisational data. No source covers all nonprofit organisations or all forms of giving, and several datasets overlap. Adding the available figures together would therefore produce double counting and a misleading national total.

Belgium nevertheless has a growing research infrastructure. HOGENT has begun collecting nationwide data on individual giving and maintains a long-running national database on bequests. KU Leuven contributes research on fundraising and nonprofit marketing, while organisations including the King Baudouin Foundation, Donorinfo, Fundraisers Forum and Statbel provide complementary information.

In 2025, several of these organisations began discussing greater harmonisation of the definitions used in their studies. Better coordination, broader national coverage and increased research funding will be required to create a comprehensive and comparable picture of philanthropy in Belgium.

Source:

Bouckaert, A.-S., Holvoet, S., Persyn, J., & Van Baelen, F. (2026). Philanthropy in Belgium. In B. Hoolwerf & J. Vamstad (Eds.), Philanthropy in Europe: Mapping Research and Data on Donations by Households, Bequests, Foundations, Corporations and Charity Lotteries (pp. 47–64). European Research Network on Philanthropy. Download the full publication here.