The Covid-19 pandemic has seen unprecedented levels of activity amongst donors and philanthropic funders. A recent McKinsey report put the response by the European philanthropic community at more than €1.1 billion by May 2020 in terms of funding that went to emergency relief for the pandemic as well as general grantee support to withstand the impact of the crisis.
This is probably underestimating the true scale of the response too, given that the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) thought that by the end of March 2020 around £500 million in funding had been already dedicated to tackle the crisis in the UK alone.
The crisis has brought to light new questions, as well as elevating existing discussions around the role of philanthropy and how it sits in the wider European framework of policy-making, as well as on the national level (inside and outside the EU).
At CAF we have been thinking about key questions for the future for philanthropy and civil society after COVID-19, and are involved in many conversations with colleagues at organisations like Dafne and the European Foundation Centre (EFC) about the future of European philanthropy in particular.
Below is a short summary and reflection on the points made by the speakers during a recent event by EFC, Dafne and the European Policy Centre, on how European policymakers and philanthropy can strengthen collaboration in the light of the COVID-19 crisis.