More than half (65%) of Portuguese people donated money to a charity in 2024, with a median donation of 30 euros, according to the study ‘Philanthropy in Spain and Portugal. Knowledge, social attitudes, and behaviors’, promoted by the Social Observatory of the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation and released this Tuesday.
“About 65% of Portuguese made at least one philanthropic donation to a charity in the past year. The declared annual donation had a median of 30 euros per person and an average of 765 euros,” the statement reads.
These “two figures (median and average) are presented because, in data of this type, it is common for many people to make small donations and only a few to contribute large amounts.”
“Thus, the median (30 euros) — which represents the arithmetic value per person — better reflects the overall behavior of the population than the average, which indicates the central point of the distribution,” according to the same note.
The causes that received the most financial support last year were: social services (32.7% of Portuguese), health (22.3%), environment and animals (18%), human rights (13.1%), and religion (6.6%), as shown in the following chart:
