A Philea spokesperson also said that the move supported Philea’s ambitions to build a Single Market for Philanthropy. Philea says that the various legal, administrative and fiscal barriers which European foundations face when acting across borders cost around €100m.

TGE was previously overseen by Belgium’s King Baudouin Foundation (KBF). According to TGE’s website, it was set up in 1995 after a Belgian donor approached KBF wanting to make a donation to Paris’ Musée du Louvre, and discovered that they would not receive the same tax benefits as they would when giving to a local organization.

The transfer follows a year of discussion and co-ordination between the organisations. Philea’s spokesperson said that while the transfer would have no impact on donors, charities or day-to-day TGE activities, the organization would begin looking at new opportunities to grow the network.

Delphine Moralis, CEO at Philea, says:

“The challenges we face require philanthropy to be at its very best, including being able to make the optimal use of its finite resources. This is an exciting – but critically important – opportunity to take on the responsibility for writing TGE’s next chapter, as it is currently the only practical and secure solution for tax-effective philanthropy across the continent.” 

Brieuc Van Damme, CEO of the King Baudouin Foundation, comments:

“We are proud to have been one of the founding fathers of TGE and to see it grow into a vital European infrastructure for generosity. Our cross-border philanthropy is becoming more effective, and the impact of our role in empowering international solidarity will only grow. We look forward to supporting TGE in its new home.”

There are currently 19 countries in the TGE network: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK.

EFA became Philea’s latest member in spring 2025.

Picture: British Library via Unsplash

The partnership will strengthen EFA’s reach in three key ways:

1. Expanded network and collaboration: Philea brings together a diverse range of philanthropic organizations, foundations, and networks from across Europe. Joining it will enable EFA’s members to connect with a broader community of stakeholders, fostering collaboration and the exchange of best practices.
2. Enhanced advocacy and influence: Philea is known for its strong advocacy efforts at the European level. Contributing within Philea will enable EFA to amplify its voice and influence policymakers on issues related to fundraising and philanthropy, with the aim of helping to achieve more favourable regulatory environments and increased support for nonprofit organizations.
3. Access to resources and knowledge: Philea provides members with access to a wealth of resources, including research, toolkits, and training programmes. EFA will leverage these to strengthen its own capacity and support for members.

Cooperating on public affairs will be central to the partnership, and a first joint meeting was held in early April with this focus. EFA’s Public Affairs Working Group members are joining Philea’s Legal Affairs Committee to share their expertise and contribute to major current issues (such as the EU AML Package, and the European Civil Society Strategy), and to bring their perspective on fundraising issues.

Philea’s monitoring will eventually cover EU consumer rights texts that have an impact on direct and digital marketing (in particular), in addition enabling EFA to participate in increasing awareness and influence where regulation is concerned in this area.

EFA also fully supports Philea’s European Philanthropy Manifesto, which calls for a Single Market for Philanthropy and Public Good.

Laurence Lepetit, EFA board member with responsibility for public affairs, and CEO of France générosités, comments:

“Partnering with Philea brings additional strength and resource to both organizations that will benefit not only our members, but the wider fundraising community across Europe.

“At a time when the European civic space is shrinking and organisations, both associations and foundations, are being challenged in their vocations and models, it is essential to build strong cooperation between the fundraising and philanthropic sector.”

At their core, nonprofits are all about lasting societal change. They often exist to fill a void in society that no other sector fills ­– whether through giving a voice to the voiceless, providing healthcare to the underserved, or protecting our environment. In addition to juggling complex missions and beneficiaries, they must continue to fundraise for their existence while delivering strong and effective programmes. All this while juggling restricted resources and high degrees of staff burnouts. There is therefore a strong case to be made for building partnerships that can leverage other sectors’ strengths’ and resources. As the old adage goes – “if you want to walk fast, go alone, if you want to walk far, go together.”

When done right, cross-sector partnerships can be a powerful tool for nonprofits to leverage their cause and accelerate their impact.  They can provide much-needed financial resources, help amplify their message, and open up new networks and opportunities. But they can also be extremely time consuming and challenging to execute – and especially maintain.

Reach for Change has been providing a model for scaling social innovation and entrepreneurship across three continents since 2009. This model is built on support and partnership with the corporate sector, where we rely on their resources, competences and core business strengths to deliver our programs. And we leverage this through so-called “co-worker engagement” programmes. Partnerships are critical to us in order to attain social impact. We also hope that our entrepreneurs identify pathways of scale through social procurement or other corporate alliances.

Lessons from our partnerships along this journey are that “soft skills” such as culture, leadership, and storytelling cannot be underestimated. At the same time, we have identified some “hard” and results-based features that need to be kept in mind when seeking out these types of alliances.

Get off to a good start

We are taught the lesson again and again – that social change does not happen overnight. This is a lesson our entrepreneurs teach us more than not, by applying to our incubator year after year with new innovations or pivoted models – all to support the core problem that they are passionate about solving. Our most frequent argument for our partners is to stick with it. Social change cannot occur in the current rush for quarterly results and earnings. This is a dialogue that must be had, especially with financial partners, whose strategies can often change and pivot, over and over again. And do be able to get to a place where such dialogue is possible, we cannot under-commit to aligning expectations, identifying realistic project plans with clear deliverables and agreeing on impact goals early on.

Partnerships require resources

Partnerships work best if we allocate the necessary resources to make them fly. We have seen that continuous joint evaluations, joint communication plans and bringing on new partners together strengthens the sustainability of the project. It is best to be transparent about the resources required from your end and from the partners’ end. Some of our best programmes have come from partners that understand the effectiveness of pilot phases and investing in programme design.

Put in the time

Investing in a partnership means investing in partner relationships. We model open and frequent dialogue and transparency, also when the project plan and deliverables are not progressing as hoped for. Schedule regular touch points, take the time to get to know one another and ask for feedback. And do not be afraid of admitting failures or hiccups. This is not only key for the not-for-profit, but also for the funding partner, or corporate to understand. Often times, it is also a desired role for many employees who want to work with purpose-related activities.

Promote a build-measure-learn approach

We love to co-create. Our innovative partnership approach means that we can pilot, refine, pivot together. Our joint values and impact goals keep us on track, but we always have fun on our journey. Our partnerships give us the opportunity to create experimental playgrounds and a platform for mutual learning.

The impact will always count

It’s important to measure and evaluate our impact for numerous reasons. When a partnership comes to an end, which it always will at some point, measurement and evaluation will ensure we bring our learnings with us. This will strengthen the outputs and outcomes of new impact partnerships to come. Last but not least – remember to celebrate the partnership’s successes and the impact created.

And finally, sometimes you need to stand firm. Creating social impact takes skill sets that are honed and developed over time. These are critical and need to be evaluated and awarded in the same way as marketing a product, or selling a service should be. Sometimes, partnerships do not fit with values and mission. And it is up to mission related organisations to know their full worth and fight for that worth.

Sofia Breitholtz

About Sofia Breitholtz

CEO at Reach for Change Sofia Breitholtz believes in the power of bringing diverse sectors and perspectives together to solve global challenges. She has a passion for questions around the future of our children and youth, women’s empowerment and empathetic leadership. Sofia has previous experience from strategy and management consulting with EY and from working with sustainability at Ben & Jerry’s/Unilever, she also has experience from development cooperation with the EU in Southern Africa and from social entrepreneurship as Deputy CEO of Solvatten, as well as experience from several Board positions in the not-for-profit sector.

Picture: Reach for Change

There’s no doubt that this is a challenging environment for charities to generate income across the board, but recent studies suggest that it’s corporate fundraising that will be hit particularly hard in the coming years.

Businesses large and small are feeling the pinch after many months of reduced trading levels due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Cost-cutting measures are being introduced and large-scale redundancy announcements are increasingly widespread, making it more difficult for employers to justify giving money away while simultaneously shedding staff.

While some national economies have been more severely impacted than others, many employees across Europe are still working from home and there remains continued uncertainty about the spread of the virus and what this means for future working practices. Against this backdrop, what does this mean for corporate fundraising?

Pandemic expected to take its toll

Recent surveys of fundraising specialists in the Netherlands, the UK and the US found that, out of a broad range of voluntary income streams, corporate giving was the area most likely to decline over the next three to five years, while major giving and legacies were expected to drive income growth.

Thomas Schiffelmann, head of marketing at Handicap International in Germany, says: “The Covid pandemic is having a huge impact on our corporate partners. Companies have less income, so we’re facing an even bigger challenge to raise funds.”

With responsibility for strategic and value-based corporate partnerships at Save the Children (Redd Barna) in Norway, Bodil Sveen Berggren agreed, saying corporate fundraising, prospecting and managing existing partnerships have all become more challenging.

She commented: “This spring, the pandemic instantly resulted in corporates reducing costs, preparing for economic uncertainty. Supporting organisations like ours, while at the same time laying off employees, is not easily communicated.

“Preventing a learning crisis from becoming a generational catastrophe requires urgent action from all. Building knowledge helps the corporate community stay attentive to the macro picture. Hence, we share information about how we work to reduce the negative effects Covid-19 has on children and communities around the world. Despite being in the middle of a deep economic downturn, we see signs of renewed interest from the B2B segment.”

While Reinier Spruit, interim fundraising manager & senior advisor at Greenpeace in the Netherlands, believes that income projections for corporate fundraising are heavily linked to the corona crisis, he also feels that corporate donations can often be overrated in the fundraising mix. He says: “The expectations from charities starting out in this area – in both how fast and how much income can be raised from corporates – are almost always too high.”

Working towards a diverse funding base will be all the more important for ensuring resilience in the years ahead. While income from corporate fundraising may well decline, some charities and NGOs have strengthened corporate relationships in recent months. The pandemic environment is also seen to have created new opportunities for relationship building for those taking a more strategic and innovative partnership approach.

Accelerating change

Many successful nonprofits in the field adjusted their corporate fundraising strategy to demonstrate their relevance in the Covid world, seeking out new potential funders with a strong fit.

In Eastern Europe, SOS Children’s Villages International was one such organisation, gaining new partners during the pandemic. Private partnerships advisor for the CEE / CIS / ME regions, Katalin Kovácsné Béres attributes this to companies’ willingness to take action to alleviate the crisis in their nearby communities, and to their own shift of approach. She emphasised the need for nonprofits to be authentic and agile in their approach to partnerships in the current environment, adding: “It’s important that needs are identified properly on both the companies’ and their own side, and that those needs are put into context at a community level, exploring how they will contribute to solving issues and creating impact.”

She explained that the key was in demonstrating empathy and willingness to care towards businesses that they work with, saying: “We waited to see which sectors were impacted positively and negatively by the crisis and then acted accordingly. This meant being supportive towards those partners whose industries had been heavily impacted by the pandemic by, for example, simply asking “how are you?” or even offering psychological support from our experts to company employees in their home office. It also meant identifying those partners that might be able to deliver additional support like extra resources for increased needs due to the pandemic. We clearly defined our Covid-related activities, identifying our role in alleviating the crisis and the precise needs related to that.”

Similarly, the Youth Academy (Nuorten Akatemia) in Finland cites how important adaptability has been to the organisation’s partnership strategy, highlighting that long-term partnerships are key. When social distancing restrictions restricted their ability to deliver services to their corporate clients, they developed new digital tools, including pedagogical games, to be used as a part of the organisation’s youth participation services and online learning platform. These services are not only beneficial for young people, but form a core part of the organisation’s unique corporate partnership model.

Seeking true partnerships above corporate donations

Fundraisers emphasise that a successful partnership is about so much more than income alone, with all parties bringing something to the table and gaining from it.

Katerina Eskelinen, international agency coordinator of Youth Academy, adds: “Ultimately, when we build a partnership, we believe that all parties should be able to profit from it. Young people get opportunities to learn and experience new things and be part of society, our partners learn more about young people and can develop their services or products in a way that is targeted to that group, and we get the opportunity of using and growing our expertise. So we don’t see the corporate partnership strictly as a charitable activity, but we see it as providing high quality services to our partners.”

Berggren agrees with the importance of mutual benefit and a willingness to adapt, saying: “These are changing times, and we need dialogue and collaboration with others to find the best solutions, adapting our products and services to meet market demand. What’s more, we should utilise the capacity the corporate community has to innovate and scale and use corporates as a channel to advocate for positive, sustainable change.

“The value of strong, long term, strategic corporate partnerships is clearer than ever. Utilising corporates’ capacity and competency, distribution network, technological knowhow and digitalisation, will lay the foundations for mutually beneficial partnerships.”

CASE STUDY: Youth Academy

Youth Academy is a Finnish youth work organisation working to build bridges between those aged 13-25 and wider society, supporting young people’s projects, ambitions, learning and participation. The organisation delivers workshops for young people on topics ranging from tax to insurance, climate change, sexual health and sustainable mobility. It also provides training for adults that work with young people.

While the organisation is mostly financed by public funds, the Youth Academy sought to generate funding from the corporate sector by setting up a trading arm to sell what the charity excels at: its in-depth understanding of young people.

Katerina Eskelinen, international agency coordinator of Youth Academy says:

“The business world wants to hear more from young people, so we offer corporations a way to connect with them and understand their views. This might include their views of the company as an employer, its services and even developing new ideas about what the company should do. To achieve these goals, we develop tools for companies to hear what young people have to say including gaming strategies such as method card decks, mobile games and story-based escape games, as well as more traditional focus groups and workshops.”

 “To have a sustainable economic model, we don’t ask for donations. We simply sell our own services; the thing that we are best at – and with very reasonable prices of course.”

Understanding what businesses want

But it’s not only charities that are looking to form genuine partnerships. Increasingly, businesses are actively seeking partnerships that enable them to do more than simply donate. They want their charitable partnerships to fit with their strategic goals, to build on a set of common goals and values, motivating employees, their customer base, and strengthening brand profile and the company’s reputation. Relationship is key.  

Berggren adds: “Doing good is doing well. Companies that demonstrate responsible business conduct, that secure their value chain, and positively influence and advocate will ultimately increase share value. As non-profits, we need to explain our role in assisting companies’ environmental, social and corporate governance strategies, and how this can help to fulfil sustainable development goals.”

Businesses are also seeking new ways to connect with customers and potential customers by demonstrating their engagement with the issues that matter to them, whether that be mental health, protecting the environment, support for the elderly or alleviating poverty.

Director of UK-based fundraising training and coaching specialist firm, Bright Spot and leader of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s masterclass on corporate fundraising during a pandemic, Rob Woods says: “Now more than ever, companies really do want to make a difference to the causes that are important to them, their community and customer base. Increasingly, we’re seeing companies embed this as their lead message in advertising programmes.

“They are talking less about their product, and instead engaging potential and existing customers by addressing the issues that they care about. Charities can help them achieve that. For charities willing to do the ground work, there is an opportunity for more valuable, strategic partnerships.”

He explains that it’s essential to understand what each company is looking for, continuing: “For instance, for the company you’re looking at, in addition to achieving good, is it also wanting to inspire employees or help engage existing customers… or anything else? The more precisely you understand the companies’ motivations, the better you will be able to build a valuable, ongoing relationship. It is not always easy to do, but great partnerships only happen when the charity – not just the fundraising team – commit to making it work.

Schiffelmann agrees saying: “A crisis like Covid shows how important it is for corporate fundraisers to practice relationship marketing – from the first prospect to a long-term partner. Charities should be working to build on their existing relationships and partnerships, especially when it comes to major donors, foundations and corporate partnerships to hold onto those contacts and to strengthen trust.

“Corporate partners will want to work with charities that have continued to engage, demonstrating that they care and that they are both authentic and reliable.”

Building and sustaining corporate partnerships

While income from corporate fundraising is expected to decline in the coming years, fundraisers recognise that there is significant potential to be met beyond monetary value, and that the current environment may well open the door to new strategic partnerships. With this in mind, what can charities do to build and sustain lasting corporate partnerships?

Woods recommends that fundraisers need to be both more focused and more proactive. He says: “Charities tend to be reactive, primarily talking to companies that have already shown an interest. But often there isn’t a great fit strategically, so it’s unlikely to raise much money. And if they are trying to seek new partnerships, the list of companies tends to be too long – an overwhelming spreadsheet that makes it hard to focus in a deliberate, sometimes creative way, to start the conversation. Sending a bunch of emails usually doesn’t work! We’ve found it pays off to have a really targeted list – a dream top ten – and to be able to articulate why the partnership makes sense for both parties. Then, one tactic is to share that list with other people – including trustees and other supporters – who might be able to introduce you. When your list is clear and focused, you find people are much more helpful.”

Eskelinen highlights the need for nonprofits to be more active in seeking new potential partners, more flexible and creative in finding ways to collaborate and reacting quickly to change.  She says: “Generally, we encourage nonprofits to recognise their expertise and find ways to transform that into a service they can provide. We believe that building long-term quality partnerships is key. Excellent partnerships will survive even in Covid times.”

Berggren concludes: “Partnerships with corporates need to be an integrated part of our business. Meeting the demands of the market, delivering the types of partnerships and “products” that corporates demand, will ultimately make us more resilient.”

Useful resources: 
Power through the Pandemic – 7 ways to raise money with major donors, corporates and trusts, even now (Rob Woods, Bright Spot)
EFA’s Coronavirus Hub