The Dutch public contributed €995m to charities in 2005, €45m up on 2004, says national charity platform CBF. Of that €200m was raised to help victims of the December 2004 tsunami which hit South East Asia.

Charities themselves spent €2.5bn – in addition to money raised by the public, charities had income from the national lotteries and other public bodies. Government subsidies also accounted for a large part of charity income.
Almost half of the money spent by charities went on international aid. The CBF based its calculations on information supplied by 625 charitable organisations.