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A Silent but Massive Dynamic

Ernest-Barthélémy Michel, Sketch for the Church of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs: Saint Martin sharing his cloak

Saint Martin sharing his cloak: a symbol of generosity and solidarity. Today, this image invites us to reflect on how the transmission of heritage can serve the collective interest.

For the past twenty years, France has been undergoing a quiet yet significant transformation: that of wealth transmission. Between 2000 and 2020, it is estimated that between €2,600 billion and €3,000 billion have been transferred through inheritances and donations.

In 2022, according to data from France Générosités, charitable bequests and donations amounted to €1.271 billion, representing just under 0.7% of total transmissions for that year.

Hypothesis: If this 0.7% ratio remained relatively stable over the past two decades, then bequests and donations to associations, foundations, and churches would have represented approximately €20 billion over this period. While this is a substantial sum in absolute terms, it remains marginal when compared to the overall volume of wealth transmitted.

Recent work by Jérôme Fourquet and Marie Gariazzo Sylvain Manternach, published by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, signals an unprecedented “great transmission” event: nearly €9,000 billion in wealth is expected to change hands by 2040, primarily from baby boomers to their heirs. This wealth pool has no equivalent in the contemporary history of our country.

If the 0.7% share remains unchanged, this would equate to approximately €63 billion for associations and foundations over the next twenty years. In other words, a tripling compared to the previous twenty years. This is significant, but still very modest relative to the total wealth being transmitted.

We attempted the projection exercise, undoubtedly a risky endeavor, but a necessary one to visualize the stakes. The chart below presents a plausible distribution of this transmission to organizations with a public interest, considering demographic dynamics: 30% of the wealth will be transmitted between 2022 and 2031, and 70% between 2032 and 2041. This non-linear assumption reflects the inevitable acceleration of deaths among the baby boom generation and the concentration of wealth over the next two decades.

This scenario leads to a gradual increase in flows, from €1.271 billion for organizations of general interest in 2022 to over €2 billion per year at the start of the 2030s, and then exceeding €4 billion by 2040.

Projected bequests and donations to non-profit organizations (2022–2041)

This projection paints a contrasted landscape. On one side, a predictable and rapidly growing resource. On the other, a relatively small share in relation to the total wealth transmitted. The challenge for public interest actors is therefore twofold: to capture their share of this transmission and, more importantly, to convince people that a bequest is not a secondary gesture, but a true societal choice.

Because beyond the numbers, the question is existential: how much of our collective wealth do we want to dedicate to the common future? Humanitarian, healthcare, social, and environmental challenges require greater funding. Bequests could become one of the major levers for this financing if an effort is made in education, trust, and recognition.

To achieve this, several conditions are necessary:

Value the social impact of bequests, showing that everyone, regardless of their wealth, can inscribe their name in a history greater than themselves.
Strengthen the culture of giving in France, still marked by family discretion and the low public valuation of testators.
Support baby boomers in their wealth reflection, through clear, respectful, and professional dialogue between associations, notaries, and families.
Ensure the transparency and effectiveness of beneficiary organizations, so that trust translates into tangible commitments.

The “great transmission” is not just a demographic phenomenon. It is a cultural and political event, in the noble sense of the word: the allocation of our collective wealth between private interests and the common good.

By 2040, it will be too late to realize that the opportunity was missed. Action must be taken today to ensure that the share of public interest in inheritances is not doomed to remain marginal. Making bequests a reflex is preparing a future where our solidarities will meet the scale of the challenges.

[1] https://www.francegenerosites.org/chiffres-cles/

[2] https://www.jean-jaures.org/publication/la-roue-de-la-fortune-constitution-et-transmission-des-patrimoines-dans-la-france-contemporaine/

Antoine Vaccaro :

He holds a PhD in Organizational Sciences – Management of Non-Market Economies from Paris-Dauphine University. After a career with major non-governmental organizations and communications groups, such as the Fondation de France, Médecins du Monde, and TBWA, he now chairs Force For Good and Cerphi (Center for Study and Research on Philanthropy).

He also holds various administrative positions within associations and has co-founded several professional organizations promoting private funding for causes of general interest, including the Association Française des Fundraisers, Euconsult, and the ESSEC Chair of Philanthropy. He has also contributed to the drafting of the code of ethics for organizations that appeal to public generosity.

Finally, he is the author of several books and articles on philanthropy and fundraising.

An article by Cyprien Fabre.

The VEDI dam in Armenia was built in partnership with the Agence Française de Développement and with the support of the European Commission. It will irrigate 3 000 hectares of farmland in the Ararat plain. Photo AFD.

2023 is already a long way off, everything is moving so fast. Humanitarian actors live in an eternal present. It’s cold right now in Armenia or Ukraine, it’s scary tonight in Sudan too, and thirst won’t wait until tomorrow in Mayotte or elsewhere. Humanitarians don’t drive looking backwards, but the OECD does.

All the humanitarian responses around the world involve thousands of individual projects that need to be aggregated to get an idea of the overall amounts, to measure and compare. Once a contract has been signed, the amounts disbursed are recorded by each of the geographical or thematic offices, then put together by a ministry – Bercy for France – and sent to the OECD, which checks line by line that the projects correspond to the definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA), of which humanitarian assistance is an important part.

In mid-January this year, the OECD published the official Official Development Assistance figures for 2023. In 2023, this ODA amounted to USD 223.3 billion, continuing an upward trend that began in 2007. This increase can be explained in part by the 5.9% rise in humanitarian funding.

The largest donors

For ODA in general, and for humanitarian assistance in particular, the concentration remains as high as ever. Firstly, the United States (USD 64.7 billion in ODA, including USD 14.5 billion in humanitarian assistance). Humanitarian funding increased in volume and as a percentage of ODA under the first Trump administration, and it is difficult to predict what will happen from now on even in the short term. Much further behind is Germany (USD 37.9 billion in ODA, including USD 2.4 billion in humanitarian assistance), followed by the European institutions (USD 26.9 billion in ODA, including USD 3 billion in humanitarian assistance). In sixth place, after Japan and the United Kingdom, France was one of the ‘big donors’ in 2023 (USD 15 billion in ODA, but only USD 410 million in humanitarian assistance). A drop in one of the largest contributors has the potential to destabilise the entire humanitarian funding system, as this drop could not be compensated for by the sum of the medium-sized or smaller contributors, if only they were able and willing to do so. The budget announcements for 2024 and 2025, already discussed in previous editions of Humanitarian Challenges, show that this is where we are. The members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which brings together the main contributors to ODA, still provide by far the largest share of the effort. Non-DAC donors, i.e. those who are not part of what are sometimes called “traditional donors”, are major contributors to humanitarian solidarity, but the systems in place do not allow for much predictability. In 2023, humanitarian funding from non-DAC donors will be driven by Turkey, which will remain above the USD 5 billion mark for the seventh consecutive year, followed by the United Arab Emirates, which will increase from USD 278 million in 2022 to USD 1 billion in 2023.

French ODA

French ODA is following the same overall trends as the other DAC countries. However, in addition to the overall drop in ODA in 2023, France is characterised by significantly lower humanitarian funding. The recent increase in humanitarian funding is an interesting development, but does not really change the “humanitarian effort”, as humanitarian funding will rise from 2% to 4% of French bilateral ODA between 2022 and 2023, still far behind the DAC average of around 15%. The two graphs below show the nature of France’s ODA and that of DAC countries. (The graphs are interactive here: FR Final 2023 statistics | Flourish)

Source : OECD, FR Final 2023 statistics | Flourish

Where does this aid go? In 2023, Ukraine was for the second consecutive year the largest recipient of ODA and other concessional financing, with USD 38.9 billion, an increase of 28.5% compared to 2022. Ukraine received almost five times more aid from DAC members than the second largest recipient, India. This also applies to humanitarian funding, which, taking all donors together, has increased by 23% in 2023, reaching USD 3.5 billion, the leading global recipient.

Other countries receive substantial humanitarian assistance. Ethiopia (USD 1.6 billion, +6%), Gaza (USD 1.7 billion, +122%), Somalia (USD 1.2 billion, +51%), DRC (USD 1.2 billion, +108%), Sudan (USD 865 million, +19%)

Other countries receive more modest amounts of humanitarian aid, with significant variations in response to the year’s events. Armenia received USD 5 million in 2022, but USD 35 million in 2023. Chad received USD 379 million in assistance, up 119% with the additional arrival of Sudanese refugees.

Don’t forget that 2023 was also marked by several natural disasters in already fragile contexts such as Libya, Syria and Papua New Guinea, Madagascar, Malawi and Tanzania, as well as Morocco and Turkey. In all these contexts, including those that generally receive little aid, humanitarian funding has been substantial.

The central Sahel has remained at similar levels of humanitarian funding, showing that the various coups d’état, while they have had a clear impact on bilateral development cooperation, have had less of an effect on the response to humanitarian needs.

With a 32% fall, Afghanistan remains at USD 1.4 billion, a level of humanitarian assistance that is still well above the 2020 level (USD 562 million). In Yemen, aid has fallen by 16% but remains high (USD 1.4 billion). Few other crisis contexts have seen a significant drop in humanitarian funding. Countries that used to receive little humanitarian aid have received less, with a notable downward trend in Iraq since 2016, and other countries with more established development trajectories (Sierra Leone, Liberia).

Who delivers this humanitarian aid? Financial structures are well established, built by and for actors who have developed mechanisms that enable them to mobilise funds quickly. In 2023, multilateral agencies mobilised half of all humanitarian funds, although the trend is downwards. These same agencies mobilised 60% of humanitarian funds in 2020. The proportion of humanitarian funding mobilised by NGOs remains more or less stable at 28% in 2023.

Since 2021, there has been a noticeable shift towards increasingly significant contributions to resilience projects marked as humanitarian, for example by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Afghanistan or Ukraine, on issues of forced displacement or food security. These channels, marked ‘other’ in the graph above, will reach 15% in 2023, compared with just 3% in 2020.

At a time when the classification of projects is not always clearly humanitarian in the “Dunantian” sense of the term, when the long-term and the short-term are intertwined, new players are appearing on the humanitarian finance scene. This trend is set to continue, taking into account the expected decline in traditional ODA and even the conceptual changes underway regarding the very nature of cooperation between countries. It’s best to be prepared.

Cyprien Fabre is head of the “crises and fragility” unit at the OECD. After several years of humanitarian missions with Solidarités, he joined ECHO, the European Commission’s humanitarian department, in 2003, and held several positions in crisis contexts. He joined the OECD in 2016 to analyze the engagement of DAC members in fragile or crisis countries. He has also written a series of “policy into action” and “Lives in crises” guides to help translate donors’ political and financial commitments into effective programming in crises. He is a graduate of Aix-Marseille Law School.