On a darkish, cutting-cold night time in January, a well-heeled crowd was listening to a piano recital on the Institut Français in London’s South Kensington. Alexandre Tharaud began with a lilting Debussy Prélude earlier than giving Ravel’s “Une barque sur l’océan” its full measure of itemizing and swaying. However the viewers — rich French individuals resident within the metropolis — weren’t principally right here for the programme of impressionist music.
Afterwards, they repaired to the Institut’s elegant double-height library for speeches and shows about philanthropy. The French ambassador, Hélène Duchêne, switching between host and native language, talked of the UK as a rustic “the place the philanthropy custom is most extremely developed”. She referred to as Present Help, which permits charities to assert 25 per cent further on donations, “un instrument formidable”.
Axelle Davezac, director-general of the Fondation de France, adopted Duchêne. The Fondation is a French authorities company arrange by Charles de Gaulle in 1969 to encourage personal philanthropy. It’s also a nationwide umbrella organisation, co-ordinating monetary assist for every part from social exclusion and violin virtuosi to rebuilding Notre-Dame cathedral and the hurricane-struck French abroad territory of Mayotte.
The occasion in South Kensington was to launch the Fondation’s UK chapter, the beginning of a seek for donors based mostly within the nation to assist French charities. Davezac spoke about “a imaginative and prescient of mutual enrichment and shared progress” for the 2 international locations, which had a “tumultuous” but “wealthy and radiant” historical past.
The language of the night was about drawing collectively two international locations, divided by Brexit and a deeper historical past, with good works and beneficiant spirits. Underlying it, although, was a recognition that because the French state, going through a extreme price range deficit, retrenches, France must be taught to like philanthropy, with all of the monetary and cultural changes that requires. To do that, its charities are coming to the UK, to seek out each cash and technique.
‘The UK is without doubt one of the largest and most beneficiant international locations in Europe. However in France, it was not the case,” says Davezac shortly earlier than the efficiency when she talks to the Monetary Occasions. She has the figures to show the disparity: regardless of related inhabitants sizes and GDPs, the UK public, together with rich people, gave £21.9bn to charity in 2023, the French €5.4bn (£4.5bn) in 2022.
With its giant French-origin inhabitants, the UK is a pure spot for Davezac, philanthropic largesse apart. Practically 276,000 French nationals utilized for the nation’s EU Settlement Scheme between August 2018 and September 2024, in line with House Workplace knowledge.

The francophone group will not be the one purpose for Davezac to open a brand new department within the UK: the French authorities, which ran a 5.8 per cent deficit in 2024, is aiming for €50bn of spending cuts and tax hikes, together with reductions for social, academic and charitable organisations. Native councils, which are usually core supporters of those our bodies, have misplaced €2.2bn in funding; the tradition ministry, €150mn. The state of affairs is “not so good”, says Davezac.
London-based philanthropist Jean-Baptiste Wautier, who was on the launch, says France’s “nanny state” is without doubt one of the most in depth amongst developed international locations, “so individuals have at all times seen charity as being the job of the state”, the place you pay excessive taxes and the state, in return, takes care of you.
He says even the authorized framework for philanthropy is missing: France has associations, however these are for “any lawful exercise aside from the ‘sharing of income’”, in line with the Council on Foundations, reasonably than particularly for charitable ends, and so are usually not similar to UK charities. “The charity sector is near nonexistent and subsequently large donors are usually not very quite a few,” says Wautier.
He provides that France’s tradition, partially deriving from religious-cultural strictures on the evils of wealth — “it’s most likely poorly digested Catholicism” — means overt coping with cash has damaging connotations. Subsequently, he says, “being seen as giving giant quantities of cash to a very good trigger, which might be seen as socially nice within the UK or US, is seen poorly, at finest impartial, in France”.
That was proved true even with the uncommon current instance of large-scale philanthropy in France, the reconstruction of Notre-Dame, severely broken by hearth six years in the past. Inside every week, France’s richest households had pledged greater than half a billion euros: €200mn from the Arnaults and LVMH, the identical from the Bettencourts and L’Oréal, €100mn from the Pinaults and Artémis. It was not lengthy earlier than an outcry: unions and leftwing politicians complained that these firms had discovered cash for Notre-Dame, however not their staff, and that they’d be eligible for tax deductions on their donations. A minimum of two households renounced them.
After Duchêne and Davezac’s speeches, there was a presentation to the viewers from Institut Think about, a Paris-based centre for care, training and analysis into genetic illnesses. The Institut Think about workforce had been hoping to satisfy new donors and, talking after the occasion, Professor Bana Jabri, govt director and a specialist in paediatrics and immunology, is filled with reward for the Fondation and says the launch supplied promising leads.
Jabri says the Institut is concentrated on “valorisation”: turning concepts into patents after which into start-ups and industrial merchandise and applied sciences. Simply as one by no means focuses solely on the organ affected by a illness however appears to be like on the total physique, says Jabri, Institut Think about generates progress by having all its teams and levels underneath one roof.

To assist its €80.3mn price range in 2023, Institut Think about obtained €34.5mn from public funders and raised €7.2mn from personal donors; it goals to sustainably enhance that within the subsequent few years to €10mn. It has been uncommon for France in its strategy to philanthropy, internet hosting charitable galas that includes artwork auctions and operating a €40mn fundraising marketing campaign, which has required wanting throughout the Channel (and the Atlantic): it’s “impressed so much by the Anglo-Saxon system”, says Jabri.
“We’re the place the US was 100 years in the past and the place the UK was 50 years in the past,” provides Laurent Mellier, Institut Think about’s improvement and worldwide philanthropy director.
These US/UK-led improvements embrace allying with personal fairness. The Elevate Group, an asset administration agency, introduced an preliminary closing of €25mn in 2023 for its Make investments for Childhood fonds de partage (shared fund), which can give 50-80 per cent of its capital beneficial properties to Institut Think about and Espérance Banlieues, a community of impartial faculties for kids in disadvantaged areas.
“A lot of organisations are usually not very comfy with this fashion of elevating funds,” says Mellier, however he sounds happy when he confirms that the fund has now reached its €40mn goal.

The battle is about greater than money. For the reason that state has been so supportive, says Jabri, it’s a new factor for people to be requested for cash: “It’s not within the tradition of French charity to put money into an enormous constructing and put your identify on it. Now we have to take note of the French mentality and the way we go about philanthropy right here.”
“We come from a tradition the place King Louis XIV was making selections for everyone,” says Mellier. “We’re removed from these occasions however we’re nonetheless functioning the way in which they did up to now.”
The topic was ostensibly uncontroversial, the proper factor to draw some France-friendly feminine philanthropists to a breakfast discuss at Colnaghi gallery in St James’s final October. Frédéric Dassas, chief curator in command of ornamental arts on the Louvre, would converse on “Marie Antoinette, Queen of the Arts” whereas exhibiting slides of ancien régime marvels: a portray, a console, a bed room on the Petit Trianon. The Fonds de dotation du Louvre (Louvre Endowment Fund) hoped to satisfy potential donors.
However about midway by means of, the lectured turned lecturers. One grande dame erupted with ideas on how the queen was portrayed in a different way in one of many biographies she had learn in contrast with Dassas’s declare. One other, when Dassas mentioned one thing about how certainly one of Marie Antoinette’s rooms would have been furnished, piped up: “I had a non-public tour, it was not like that in any respect.” Dassas mentioned it definitely would have been again within the queen’s day. “However I had a non-public tour!”
Dassas was impeccably well mannered, however the Louvre Endowment Fund was studying one thing UK charities have lengthy identified about coping with the wealthy while you need to ask them for cash: a certain quantity of biting your lip is important. The converse is that there’s an Anglo-American openness, certainly flashiness, round giving which France forbears.
The Louvre Endowment Fund, just like the Fondation de France, is on the pioneering facet of French philanthropy. It was established in 2009, following “Anglo-Saxon fashions”, says its web site, due to the €400mn it’s receiving over 30 years from licensing its identify to a museum in Abu Dhabi. Its portfolio, which stood at €337mn on the finish of 2023, has half its cash in equities, but in addition investments in personal fairness and infrastructure, reminiscent of Colombia’s largest hydroelectric plant.
Philippe Gaboriau, the endowment’s govt director, says it has held occasions in Switzerland, Monaco and the UK. “Every time it’s at all times the identical logic: all these international locations are stuffed with French individuals who have been transferring [there] for fiscal or skilled causes. And there are large communities of French rich individuals in these international locations.” The French in London are the bridgehead: subsequent come British francophiles and the broader worldwide wealthy.
Gaboriau is much less satisfied than Axelle Davezac of the distinction in generosity between the UK and France: “The diploma of philanthropy for People has no equal within the western world,” he says. “The sphere of philanthropy within the UK is considerably much like the one we discover in France — not that unhealthy.”
It won’t be unhealthy, however it’s clearly not enough for French charities. The UK was the Fondation de France’s second new worldwide arm up to now yr, having established an Asian department based mostly in Hong Kong in July 2024. (In 2000 it launched a buddies organisation in charities’ blissful hunting-ground, the US.) However the British chapter might be closest to house and comes after years of strained cross-Channel relations due to Brexit. Davezac is specific that this transfer is an opportunity for the UK and France “to reshape our hyperlinks”.
The philanthropist Wautier sees charity not simply as a approach of bettering UK-France relations, but in addition as a harbinger of one thing greater too: “Europe is sinking and neither France nor the UK on their very own can flip their future round, and there could be a lot in collaborating extra.” Alongside defence and migration administration, maybe philanthropy will change into one of many ties binding a brand new Europe.