Charity Lottery: An Idea That Has Been in the Works for Twenty Years—It’s Time to Finally Adopt It

The Case for a French Solidarity Lottery

Winners of the Fernsehlotterie in Germany

A long march, and one missed opportunity after another

I have been fighting on this issue for almost twenty years. The Landau report on New International Contributions, submitted in 2004 in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, is probably the moment I truly believed the cause was going to move forward. Having been heard by the working group, I had strongly pushed the idea of a solidarity lottery. The response, at the time, from one of the senior officials at Coordination Sud: “Gambling to fund humanitarian work? You can’t be serious.” The idea was buried, and France opted instead for the tax on airline tickets — effective in its time, but difficult to replicate today and entirely dependent on political decision-making.

A few months later, the French Development Agency (AFD) commissioned me to write a forward-looking study on innovative sources of private funding for French international solidarity NGOs. I devoted an entire chapter to lotteries, raffles, and draws. That study, submitted in June 2006, already cited the project “Parions pour un monde meilleur” (“Let’s bet on a better world”), led by Frédéric Koskas and Ondine Khayat together with a coalition of nine NGOs (Aides, Aide et Action, Care, La Chaîne de l’Espoir, AFXB, Terre des Hommes, Intervida, SOS Sahel, WWF). The idea: have the Française des Jeux (FDJ) organize additional draws in which 20% of the share normally allocated to winners would instead go to humanitarian causes, without costing the State anything. The concept received good media coverage at a press conference in the summer of 2006.

Ten years of rowing against the current. We were finally received at FDJ, with a reception cold enough to make clear we were seriously unwelcome. And as time went on, FDJ began occupying the field itself. The Loto du patrimoine (“Heritage Lottery”), launched in 2018 with Stéphane Bern and the Fondation du patrimoine, is the most visible example: it has raised more than €180 million cumulatively since 2018, including €29.1 million in the 2025 edition alone.¹ The scratch card game Mission Nature, launched in October 2023 in partnership with the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), raised more than €7 million in its very first edition.² Meanwhile, independent project sponsors keep being told that a general-purpose solidarity lottery run by non-profit organizations (OSBL) themselves is simply not possible.

Along with a few fellow travelers, we eventually founded the Association pour la libéralisation des loteries solidaires (APLS) — a small group of lobbyists, one contact in the Senate — and then the dissolution of the National Assembly dissolved us too, like some bad joke.

Twenty years on, the finding remains the same: France is missing out on a resource worth several hundred million euros a year for civil society, out of loyalty to a model that exists nowhere else in Europe in such a locked-down form.

What is happening elsewhere

While we go in circles, the model of regular solidarity lotteries has become established in several European countries. The most striking case is Novamedia, founded in 1983 by Boudewijn Poelmann in the Netherlands, which today operates the Postcode Lottery Group in five countries: the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway.

Winners of the Postcode Lottery in the United Kingdom

A few recent figures to give a sense of scale:

In 2024, the Postcode Lottery Group posted record revenue of €2.7 billion and paid out €969 million to its charity partners.
In 2025, partner charities received €1 billion.
Since 1989, the cumulative total paid out to causes of general interest has surpassed €15 billion.
In 2021, Novamedia was ranked the third-largest private philanthropic donor in the world, behind the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Alongside Novamedia, other models exist in Europe: Aktion Mensch and the Fernsehlotterie in Germany (together paying out more than €220 million a year), the Health Lottery in the United Kingdom, and ONCE in Spain (the historic lottery for the blind, with more than €2 billion in annual revenue). The European Charity Lotteries Association (ACLEU) estimates that, if rolled out across the whole European Union, this model could mobilize €10 billion a year for civil society.

Ticket for the April 2026 ONCE Spanish lottery for the Las Cuervas Natural Park in Almería

France, the fifth-largest economy in the eurozone, remains one of the very few major European countries where this tool does not exist. According to the Panorama national des générosités 2024, published by France générosités and the Fondation de France, total charitable giving in France reached €9.2 billion in 2022 — €5.4 billion in individual donations and bequests, and €3.8 billion in corporate philanthropy — benefiting general-interest non-profits.³ This giving, despite real growth over the past fifteen years, has stagnated in real terms since 2022. A well-designed solidarity lottery could, on its own, eventually add several hundred million euros to that pool, for the sole benefit of the general-interest sector.

Why is it blocked in France?

The blockage comes down to a single word: monopoly. Since the general prohibition law of 21 May 1836, lotteries have in principle been banned in France. Three main exceptions coexist today: FDJ, which holds the monopoly on lottery games (draws and scratch cards) and on sports betting through its physical retail network; operators licensed by the ANJ (Unibet, Betclic, Winamax, PMU, etc.) for online sports and horse-race betting and online poker, opened to competition by the law of 12 May 2010; and casinos. On the margins, charity raffles are tolerated, but confined to a single annual event per association, with capped winnings and no regular draw. It is specifically the lottery monopoly that locks up this issue, not the gambling market as a whole.

The PACTE law of 22 May 2019 privatized FDJ while simultaneously granting it an exclusive 25-year concession over lottery games. In other words, the State privatized an operator while guaranteeing it a monopoly. That is the lock that needs to be broken — and it is not as locked as it appears.

There are three reasons for this. First, in October 2024 the European Commission issued a decision (EU 2025/892) that validates the PACTE framework, but under strict conditions and only after a formal in-depth investigation lasting several years. The question of the scope of the monopoly, and of state-aid law, therefore remains open in practice.

Second, EU law itself is clear: a national monopoly can coexist with other forms of gaming, particularly non-profit ones, provided they serve distinct general-interest objectives. That is exactly the case in every country that has authorized solidarity lotteries: the United Kingdom since 1976, the Netherlands since 2016, Germany since 2012. None of them has seen its national lottery collapse as a result.

Finally — and this is the most recent development — a bill (No. 565, 2025–2026) was tabled in the Senate on 23 April 2026 by Senator Bernard Delcros, aiming precisely to authorize the organization of solidarity lotteries in France. For the first time in twenty years, the issue is formally back before lawmakers. It needs to be seized.

The model we propose

A French-style solidarity lottery, inspired by the Novamedia model but adapted to our legal and political context, should rest on five principles.

Governance by the non-profits themselves, carried by a dedicated foundation. Above all, this must not be entrusted to FDJ United. The experience of the past twenty years is clear: a commercial operator under monopoly captures the momentum for the benefit of its own “good cause” operations. The opposite approach is needed: a publicly recognized foundation, created specifically for this purpose or built on an existing structure such as the Fondation de France, holding the license and redistributing the funds in full to a collective of non-profits — associations and foundations selected on transparent criteria. The Novamedia model is exemplary here: the entire group is owned by a foundation with no shareholders to enrich, which cannot legally sell its shares. All profit is reinvested in the mission.

Group photo from the presentation of the coupon dedicated to the Las Cuevas de Sorbas Natural Park in Almería, Spain

A state license and a strict regulatory framework. There is no question of opening up the gambling sector to just anyone under the banner of humanitarian aid. The National Gaming Authority (ANJ), created in 2019, is the right body to issue the license, set transparency requirements, control advertising, and guard against problem gambling. The British Lotteries Council model, or the Dutch model (which has authorized any non-profit initiative paying out at least 40% of revenue to the charitable sector since 2016), can serve as references.

An independent ethics committee. Beneficiary organizations would be selected on criteria of financial transparency, governance, quality of action, and representativeness of causes (humanitarian, environmental, research, social). Annual publication of fund allocations. Impact evaluation of funded projects.

A minimum payout threshold to the non-profit sector of at least 30% of revenue — the level set by the UK’s People’s Postcode Lottery, and far above what FDJ currently allocates to “good causes” (on the order of 0.5% to 1% of revenue depending on the game). Evidence from elsewhere in Europe shows this rate is economically sustainable.

A mechanism of regular draws, rather than the single annual event of a charity raffle, which allows neither player loyalty nor sustainable revenue. This is precisely the difference between a raffle and a solidarity lottery: regularity, which turns a one-off act of disguised giving into a habit of civic consumption.

Answering the objections, one by one

“This will compete with FDJ United and weaken revenue for the State.”

This is the objection raised most consistently. It does not survive scrutiny. Data from the European countries that have authorized solidarity lotteries all show that substitution with the national lottery is marginal. The UK Gambling Commission stated in 2018 that solidarity-lottery sales are not seen as a significant driver of national lottery sales. In the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany — precisely the markets with the strongest national lotteries — solidarity lotteries have grown without significant cannibalization.

The explanation is simple: the audience for a solidarity lottery is not the same as the audience for EuroMillions. Solidarity-lottery players are mostly occasional donors, drawn as much by the cause as by the prize, with small regular stakes (often €2 to €10 a month via subscription). Their sociological profile is closer to that of a non-profit donor than a compulsive gambler. It is a complement, not a substitute.

“This will cost the State in lost tax revenue.”

The opposite is true. Unlike a donation, which is 66% tax-deductible for individuals, a solidarity lottery costs the State nothing in tax breaks. Better still: the State collects VAT on ticket sales, just as on any other service. On a hypothetical turnover of one billion euros — roughly the scale Novamedia has reached at maturity in each of its markets — the State would collect around €167 million a year in new revenue at the standard VAT rate. On top of that come social contributions and corporate tax paid by technical service providers along the chain. The net effect on public finances is positive, with no tax expenditure in return.

“Funding humanitarian work through gambling is not ethical.”

This objection deserves attention, because it is what killed the project in 2004. It is worth recalling a piece of history that should be better known. The French National Lottery, created in 1933 — the direct ancestor of today’s FDJ — was established to formalize the lottery run by the association of “Gueules cassées” (“broken faces”), founded by disfigured veterans of the First World War to fund their own care and that of their comrades. The State of the Third Republic judged, in the context of the 1929 crisis, that it was entirely legitimate for chance to fund aid to the nation’s wounded. The Union des Blessés de la Face et de la Tête (the “Gueules cassées”) still holds 10.1% of FDJ United’s capital today, and most of its income still comes from the dividends of the lottery it helped create ninety years ago.

Poster for the first Lithuanian charity lottery. 1918. Digital print. Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences: Vytautas Bičiūnas (1893–1943): “The First Lithuanian Charity Lottery” (1918)

In other words: France has already been funding causes through gambling for nearly a century. It has even institutionalized the practice in the capital structure of its historic operator. To refuse today, on grounds of “ethics,” to let a similar mechanism support other causes — international solidarity, culture, the environment, the fight against poverty, medical research — amounts to a kind of historical denial. If gambling could fund the maxillofacial surgery of the disfigured of Verdun, it can fund food aid in the Sahel and the protection of primary forests.

The ethical argument can, in fact, easily be turned around. France’s gambling market generates roughly €13 billion a year in gross gaming revenue. That money already exists and is already being spent. The only question is whether a fraction of that flow can be redirected toward the general interest, beyond the State’s tax revenue alone. It is arguably more ethically questionable to let 100% of that money enrich a single privatized company and its reference shareholder than to redirect a portion of it to civil society.

“The model won’t work in France — the market is already saturated.”

This is exactly the argument that was made in Germany before 2012 and in the Netherlands before 2016, against authorizing solidarity lotteries. In both cases, reality proved the predictions wrong. Aktion Mensch raised €175 million in 2019, within its first decade of operation. The Dutch Postcode Loterij became, over thirty years, the country’s second-largest lottery.

More concretely, two recent French operations have shown the public’s appetite for this kind of offering. A Picasso-themed sale in aid of Care France raised around €5 million from an initial value of €1 million. A Système U operation for Action Contre la Faim mobilized €1 million from unused loyalty points alone. These operations took place at the margins of the legal framework, but they show one thing clearly: the demand exists.

Timing and urgency

Three windows make this a particularly opportune moment.

The first is legislative: the Delcros bill of 23 April 2026 is moving forward. Whatever its ultimate fate, it puts the issue back on the parliamentary table for the first time in twenty years. Non-profits have a concrete opportunity to make their voice heard — through committee hearings, advocacy with senators and MPs, and mobilizing public opinion. Failing to seize this window would be a mistake.

The second issue is budgetary: France’s humanitarian budget currently stands at 285 million euros through the three usual channels (CDCS, NUOI, AAP). It was 800 million euros in 2023, and a commitment had been made to increase it to one billion by 2025. This is a double blow when one considers that the percentage of humanitarian aid in France is among the lowest among European Union and OECD countries. Budget constraints look set to persist. NGOs can no longer simply wait for public funding decisions made in an increasingly harsh climate. Diversifying funding sources has become essential, and the solidarity lottery is one of the very few high-potential levers that depends neither on a budgetary trade-off nor on a willingness to pay taxes that is itself declining.

The third is more structural, tied to the changing nature of giving. Every study points the same way: the donor base is aging, direct marketing is losing effectiveness, and donor-file attrition is accelerating. Traditional giving — a one-off check in response to a mailed appeal — has reached its limits. The models on the rise are digital giving, automatic bank transfers, legacy giving (bequests, donations, life insurance), major philanthropy, and “conso-don-action” — giving embedded in an act of consumption or leisure, small-scale recurring engagement. The solidarity lottery does not replace any of these levers; it fits naturally into this family of regular giving, woven into everyday life, low in amount but with a strong cumulative effect.

In conclusion

There is another avenue, one I have championed for just as long and which is probably even more powerful: liberalizing bequest law. As long as France does not genuinely allow a testator — with or without heirs — to dispose of their estate more freely, we will continue to miss out on an enormous resource. British charities and American non-profits draw 30% to 50% of their resources from bequests. French non-profits struggle to exceed 5%. That is the other great structural battle to be fought.

But let’s not conflate the two fights. The solidarity lottery is ready, simpler to carry forward, and it now has an open parliamentary window. The issue has been ripe for twenty years. It is time to stop going in circles.

To public authorities, I ask three things: authorize, regulate, do not confiscate. Authorize, by passing the bill or a text inspired by it. Regulate, by entrusting the ANJ with issuing licenses and oversight. Do not confiscate, by refusing to let the mechanism be absorbed by FDJ United — otherwise, experience has taught us, the spirit of the reform will be diluted.

To associations, foundations, and all general-interest non-profits, I say: we need to mobilize now, together. A coalition of credible organizations, ready to build a joint foundation and present a well-structured project to lawmakers, could shift the balance of power. This is exactly the role that Coordination Sud, Le Mouvement Associatif, Don en Confiance, France Générosités, and the Centre Français des Fonds et Fondations can play in the coming weeks.

And to the readers of this journal: the next time you hear the moral objection — “funding development through gambling, you can’t be serious” — remember the Gueules cassées. That is how France has already been funding part of its social solidarity since 1933. It is time to open the second chapter.

Antoine Vaccaro.

Sources and notes

¹ FDJ United, “Patrimoine” page (fdjunited.com/fr/patrimoine) and Mission Bern FAQ (missionbern.fr/faq), accessed May 2026: “Since 2018, more than €180 million has been raised to support endangered heritage.” 2025 edition: €29.1 million announced by the Fondation du patrimoine in September 2025.

² FDJ press release, 14 March 2024: “Mission Nature: more than €7 million already raised for biodiversity conservation,” in partnership with the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), not the WWF as sometimes reported. FDJ separately supports WWF France’s Nature Impact fund through its own corporate philanthropy, but without a dedicated lottery game.

³ France générosités and Fondation de France, Panorama national des générosités 2024 (2022 data), published December 2024: €9.225 billion in total charitable giving in France, including €5.4 billion from individual giving and €3.8 billion in corporate philanthropy

Antoine Vaccaro :

He holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Sciences—Management of the Non-Profit Sector—from Paris-Dauphine University. After a career with major nongovernmental organizations and communications firms, such as the Fondation de France, Médecins du Monde, and TBWA, he now serves as president of Force For Good and Cerphi (Center for the Study and Research on Philanthropy).

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

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

Discover other articles from this edition:

Donating as an Antiviral

Philanthropy Put to the Test in an Increasingly Brutal World

Croix-Rouge volunteers roaming the streets of Paris looking for homeless people in 2016

The Return of Authoritarian Regimes

The numbers are stark. The 2026 Democracy Report[1] by the V-Dem Institute in Gothenburg, published last March, paints a grim picture: 74% of humanity now lives under an authoritarian regime. For the first time in half a century, more people live in closed autocracies (28%) than in all liberal and electoral democracies combined (26%). Only 7% of the world’s population still lives in a fully liberal democracy. In 2025, forty-four countries simultaneously became autocratic. A record. The United States itself has shifted from the “liberal democracy” category to that of “electoral democracy.”

“Les empires contre-attaquent”, a documentary by Jean-François Colosimo (watch here) : https://www.france.tv/documentaires/documentaires-societe/8332479-les-empires-contre-attaquent.html

This drift is no mere fluke. It is fueled by three identifiable drivers.

First, industrialized disinformation. Social media platforms, driven by algorithms designed to boost emotional engagement, have turned fake news into a thriving industry. Disinformation is no longer an isolated incident; it is an infrastructure. As the Fondation de France noted during its Parliamentary Meetings in May 2026[2], this saturation produces “information fatigue” that erodes democratic participation itself.

Second, the organized challenge to science. Climate, vaccines, artificial intelligence, biodiversity: scientific consensus is becoming, in public debate, just one “opinion” among many. Doubt, which is the very essence of the scientific method, is being weaponized against science itself. Knowledge is being stripped of its authority, leaving every citizen adrift without a compass.

Finally, the collapse of authoritarian boundaries. What once seemed unspeakable is now spoken. What once seemed unthinkable is now being organized. The bulwarks that our societies had patiently erected—separation of powers, judicial independence, freedom of the press, minority rights—are crumbling one after another, sometimes through perfectly legal votes. This is the “autocratic legalism” identified by political scientists. Democracy being used to dismantle democracy.

© Imperial War Museums – General De Gaulle descending the Champs Elysees with his entourage during Liberation (25-26th of August 1944)

In this landscape, the temptation to withdraw is strong. Every man for himself, my clan first, fear of the other elevated to a political strategy. Yet—and this is where we must return to the origins of Homo sapiens—it is precisely this strategy that led to the Neanderthals’ downfall.

A lesson from the depths of time

There is a thought experiment on which anthropologists agree and that we can take seriously. Why did the Neanderthals disappear, while Sapiens—their biologically comparable, sometimes less robust cousins—thrived? A fruitful hypothesis, reported by Véra Nikolski and Nicolas Pichoff in Why There Are No Amazons[3], argues that our species survived not through strength, but through organization—thanks to a division of labor, risk-sharing, and the circulation of skills and goods among group members. What Sapiens invented was not so much a technique as a bond. Cooperation, reciprocity, and the collective management of vulnerability are not moral embellishments tacked onto our humanity; they are the very conditions of its emergence and persistence.

The groups that were able to share the risks, protect what was most precious for the future, and organize tangible solidarity left descendants. The others died out, in silence, without a spectacular battle. The selection was demographic, slow, almost imperceptible, and relentless.

© Justine Muzik Piquemal – Distribution of kits in Sudan (May 2026)

What holds true for Paleolithic societies holds true, on a different level, for civilizations. A society that dismantles its bonds of solidarity, that values the “every man for himself” mentality, that regards giving as a weakness and fraternity as naivety, does not collapse suddenly: it dies out through attrition.

Seneca, Mauss: The Forgotten Grammar of Connection

Long before anthropology formalized these insights, two thinkers had set us on the right track.

Seneca, in De Beneficiis[4] depicts the three Graces entwined in a circle: one gives, another receives, the third returns. Three moments of a single, inseparable movement that form the very fabric of civic life. The order of beneficence demands it. One must know how to give in moderation, receive with dignity, and return without calculation. To break the circle, to refuse to give, to disdain receiving, to forget to return—is to dissolve the city. Seneca, a witness to the final century of a decaying Roman Republic, knew what he was talking about. When social bonds are reduced to mere transactions, power inevitably becomes brutal.

© Lucas Vorsterman – Paper engraving of Seneca’s bust (1638) : on the left. / © The Society of the Sociology Studies Center’s Friends – Portrait of Marcel Mauss belonging to a collection of 15 sociologists portraits : one the right.

Twenty centuries later, Marcel Mauss revisited this insight in The Gift (1925)[5]. Studying the Kwakiutl potlatch, he demonstrated that in all human societies—not just “primitive” ones—the gift is never gratuitous in the sense of being arbitrary. It creates an obligation. It establishes a debt of gratitude that binds the community together. Giving, receiving, returning: this threefold movement, writes Mauss, is “the bedrock” upon which our societies rest. He even saw in it a way out for his own era, even then!

Faced with the rise of authoritarianism. Organized generosity, he said in essence, is what distinguishes a society from a jungle.

Yet our era, in turn, finds itself in the same position as Seneca’s and Mauss’s, compelled to rediscover a grammar it is in the process of forgetting.

Philanthropy as an Antiviral

Let’s be clear about the medical metaphor. A virus thrives when it encounters a weakened host. It fails when the body has trained defenses. “Illiberal” tendencies thrive on three weaknesses: the isolation of individuals, mistrust of shared institutions, and the collapse of a shared sense of purpose. Philanthropy, understood in the broadest sense—generosity, patronage, volunteering, community engagement, and civic mobilization—directly addresses these three areas.

Against isolation, it forges connections. When a patron funds a cultural center in a rural area, when a volunteer supports a migrant, when a foundation backs an independent local media outlet, it is not merely a service rendered; it is a bond being formed, concrete proof that society still holds together through something other than fear.

Against distrust, it proves itself through action. A democracy is credible only if it keeps its promises on a daily basis. Yet the state, facing budget cuts everywhere, can no longer do everything. Philanthropy, when rigorous and transparent, demonstrates through action that there is a third way between the failing state and the indifferent market: that of a society that takes charge of itself, without waiting for permission.

In the face of the collapse of meaning, it re-inscribes the act of giving within a long chain. The patron does not act for immediate personal gain; rather, he passes on, as Seneca urged and as Mauss described. They embrace the temporality of Sapiens—that of slow, cultural selection—knowing that the impact of cooperation is not measured by the fiscal year but across generations.

The V-Dem report highlights that the countries most resistant to “autocratization” are precisely those where civil society remains robust, organized, and well-funded. The European Commission was spot on when it launched its European Democracy Shield[6] and its European Center for Democratic Resilience in 2026, one of the pillars of which is explicitly support for philanthropic civil society. Keeping democracy alive now requires, in the words of the Fondation de France, active support for pluralism, media literacy, and a culture of debate. Philanthropy is no longer just charity: it is democratic infrastructure.

Fresco “L’Ecole d’Athènes” by Raphael (1509-1511) : exchanges between intellectuals from the Antiquity inside the agora as an allegory of Athenian democracy

A point of concern: the concentration of philanthropy

However, we must highlight a dangerous trend threatening philanthropy itself, which, if left unchecked, could turn the remedy against the very evil it claims to cure.

In the United States, about 1% of donors now account for nearly half of all private giving. A few very large foundations, often backed by astronomical personal fortunes, wield more influence—in terms of their capacity for action—than entire government departments. This trend is spreading, to varying degrees, throughout the Western world, including France. The phenomenon is not inherently reprehensible. Without these substantial commitments, entire sectors of medical research, culture, and emergency humanitarian aid would not survive. Many of these philanthropists act with integrity, transparency, and a keen sense of responsibility.

But too great an asymmetry carries with it a risk that must be faced head-on: that of a billionaire philanthropy which, without intending to, would decide—in place of the many—which causes deserve attention, which problems deserve to be addressed, and which voices deserve to be heard. When giving becomes the preserve of a select few, the dance of the Three Graces loses its balance. A small circle gives a great deal, a multitude receives, and the third Grace—the one who gives back, who passes on, who closes the cycle—struggles to find her place. Yet it is precisely this widespread, distributed, grassroots circulation that transforms a society into a true community of reciprocity rather than a mere top-down chain of charity.

© Simone D. McCourtie – Bill Gates, co-founder of the foundation named after him, visits the Wolrd bank on the 17th of April 2016 in Washington D.C.

In contrast to this concentration, we must consider what might be called the “anthill”: philanthropy by the masses, consisting of modest but consistent giving, community-based volunteering, and daily involvement in civic organizations. The ten euros donated each month to a local nonprofit, the hours spent on a street outreach patrol, the bequest from a retiree to a cause close to their heart, the fundraising drive by a neighborhood committee—this is democratic philanthropy. It doesn’t make the headlines, it doesn’t have university lecture halls named after it, but it weaves the strongest fabric. Sapiens, him again, didn’t survive thanks to a few exceptional hunters. He endured thanks to the cooperation of everyone, from the most skilled to the most modest, each contributing according to their means.

The vitality of a philanthropic society is therefore measured less by the total amount raised than by the number of its donors and volunteers, the diversity of its contributors, and the variety of causes supported. Great fortunes play an indispensable role, but they cannot have a monopoly. The challenge, for public authorities as well as for the sector itself, is to protect and stimulate the ecosystem of small donors just as much as to honor the major ones—through tax policies, by fostering a culture of generosity starting in schools, by recognizing volunteer work, and by placing trust in grassroots organizations. Only at this cost will philanthropy remain a democratic antidote and not, by tragic irony, become one of the very channels of concentration it seeks to combat.

A Cycle to Be Repeated

What can we do, in practical terms? The lesson of the Three Graces—giving, receiving, and returning—is not just a slogan. It is a discipline.

Giving means breaking the financial silence. In France, companies, wealthy individuals, and even modest contributors have powerful tax mechanisms (philanthropy, tax-exempt foundations, endowment funds) that transform every euro committed into collective leverage. Giving also means giving time, expertise, and attention—resources even scarcer than money.

Les Trois Grâces. Antonio Canova. 1757-1822

Receiving—that is, accepting—is undoubtedly the most difficult act for our modern societies. To receive without shame requires recognizing interdependence as a strength, not as a humiliation. Organizations, media outlets, researchers, and artists who accept philanthropic support must be able to do so with their heads held high, while maintaining their independence—what Mauss called the “freedom of the recipient.”

To give back, finally, is to make it bear fruit. Those who have received must, in turn, pass it on—through the quality of their work, by training those who follow, by expanding the circle. The cycle never stops. Each generation is a temporary link in it.

On a global scale, we are facing a test of cohesion. The human groups that, in the coming decades, will know how to maintain their solidarity, fund their counter-powers, support their independent media, protect their researchers, and welcome their vulnerable, will endure. The others will be swept away by the brutal slope.

Philanthropy is not a mere add-on for prosperous times. In a world that is growing harsher, it is the antiviral, the vaccine, the civilizational prophylaxis—provided it remains everyone’s responsibility, and not the privilege of a few. Let us stay in the circle.

Antoine Vaccaro.

Footnotes :

[1] https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf

[2] https://www.fondationdefrance.org/fr/rencontres-parlementaires-2026

[3] https://www.fayard.fr/livre/pourquoi-les-amazones-nexistent-pas-9782213733395/

[4] https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/livre/9782251459561/le-de-beneficiis-de-seneque-sa-signification-

[5] https://www.puf.com/essai-sur-le-don-0

[6] https://luxembourg.representation.ec.europa.eu/actualites-et-evenements/actualites/le-bouclier-europeen-pour-la-democratie-et-la-strategie-de-lue-pour-la-societe-civile-ouvrent-la-2025-11-12_fr

Antoine Vaccaro :

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

Discover other articles from this edition :