The 2025 Rapport Sur Les Dons Suisse or Spendenreport Schweiz shows 82% of households making a donation in 2024. This is a substantial increase from 72% in the year before, and more in line with figures in the low eighties recorded in previous reports.

However, the median donation fell to CHF300 (€321), the lowest figure since 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 25%. The report says that median donations from young families, who have been hit particularly hard by the economic climate, dropped by 50%.

Household giving rates grew from 74% to 82% in the country’s German-speaking majority, and from 66% to 79% among its French-speaking population. In its Italophone community, the smallest of Switzerland’s three major groups, giving rates dropped slightly, from 76% to 74%.

Donors’ preferred causes remained similar to in previous years. Survey respondents were most likely to cite domestic social and emergency (48%) and nature, the environment and animals (also 48%) as priorities, closely followed by children and young people (46%) and disability (45%).

Swissfundraising board member Ruth Wagner writes in the report:

“Overall, the sector’s reputation is good and stable. Some aspects such as transparency or innovation capacity are (still) judged somewhat more critically in 2024, and lack of confidence and questioning of charities’ effectiveness are increasingly cited as reasons for not donating.”

“In my opinion, two aspects are extremely important for market development and future success: the media mix is ​​becoming increasingly crucial, and donor loyalty needs to be rethought. It is precisely in digital channels, but also in broadcasting, that one can achieve relatively low-cost reach – and awareness is fundamentally important as background noise and a driving force, not just for conversion.”

Other articles in the Rapport Sur Les Dons include a look back at the AI usage guidance issued by Swissfundraising earlier in the year, and it also includes data from a recently-released report by the Zewo Foundation, based on data from a group of major Swiss charities.

Zewo’s report estimated that total giving in the country in 2024 was 2.25bn CHF, the same figure as in 2023. This total has now been in excess of 2bn CHF for five consecutive years.

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This is a key finding of a new report written by Zewo Foundation, with support from the University of Fribourg, and published in both French and German.

The report looks at trends around donations to organisations holding the Zewo certification – a standard meaning that the charity meets certain expectations in areas including ethics, governances, transparency, and fundraising and communication.

The study also estimates that total giving in the country in 2024 was 2.25bn CHF, the same figure as in 2023, as previously reported by Fundraising Europe.

The 2023 and 2024 figure is 10% lower than in 2022, but still higher than all other previous years, and represents a doubling of giving in the past two decades – the figure in both 2003 and 2004 was 1.1bn CHF.

International strength

Overall, 55% of Zewo-certified charities experienced a decline in fundraising income. This picture changes based on charities’ focus – 60% of organisations working in Switzerland experienced a decline, while for internationally-focused organisations it was lower, at 45%.

However, total income for these organisations rose by 2.7% to 5.1bn CHF. This was thanks mainly to Government funding increasing during 2024 from just less than 1.9bn CHF to a little more than 2bn CHF.

In total, 51% of Zewo-certified organisations’ fundraising income comes from public donations; 27% from other churches and other nonprofits (including major fundraising campaign La Chaîne du Bonheur); 18% from legacy gifts; and 4% from enterprises.

Digital drop

As well as showing that digital donations are typically half as valuable as donations through traditional methods, the value of online giving has fallen year-on-year.

For digital donations on Twint, the most popular digital platform among Zewo-certified charities, the average value dropped from 117 CHF in 2022 and 101 CHF in 2023 to 86 CHF in 2024. Digital donations using credit cards also dropped from 168 CHF in 2022 to 108 CHF in 2024, while PayPal gifts have more than halved in average value from 160 CHF in 2022, to 74 CHF in 2024.

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Swissfundraising says that the guidelines are designed to enable both innovation and responsibility, ensuring fundraisers can “effectively utilise the potential of AI for fundraising without neglecting ethical, legal, or environmental aspects”.

The guide’s opening section on ethics reminds readers that AI should “serve as a tool to support people” but that important decisions must “always remain the responsibility of humans”.

The guide goes on to urges charities to “establish clear guidelines” to ensure that AI is used in an inclusive manner, and to empower staff to recognise hallucinations and bias, and to develop strategies to reduce them.

It also advises that all content created by AI “should be reviewed for accuracy and compliance with the principles of fairness and diversity” before being used internally or externally. Staff training and a “clearly-defined review process” are key to making this happen, it says.

Legal and green issues

In addition, the guide urges fundraisers to be mindful of copyright and data protection rules, both in terms of materials uploaded to AI models, and the content produced by them, and tells the sector to remember the environmental impact of AI and prioritise tools which are energy-efficient or powered by renewable energy. The guide says:

“The benefits of using AI should always be weighed against the resource consumption.”

While the five-page guideline document is relatively high-level, Swissfundraising points out that charities can choose to adopt other, more detailed frameworks to guide in their use of AI.

The working group which created the guidelines included two members of the Swissfundraising board – Christine Bill and Oliver Graz – as well as its director Roger Tinner.

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This is according to the latest Rapport sur les Fondations en Suisse 2025 by SwissFoundations, a network representing the country’s foundations, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Basel and University of Zurich.

The higher estimate is the result of new anonymised data being made available to Basel researchers by the Autorité fédérale de surveillance des fondations, the public body overseeing foundations nationally.

That data showed that the 5,281 foundations subject to national oversight make grants of 4.6bn CHF per year. That data was extrapolated to cover foundations supervised at a regional (canton) or local level.

The report says that there are 13,722 registered foundations in Switzerland – a figure that has more than doubled in the past 20 years – and that during 2024, 298 new foundations were created and 268 were closed.

Nearly half (49.1%) of those 13,722 can be considered grantmaking foundations. A third are ‘operational foundations’, i.e. ones working on the ground, and the remaining fifth are mixed – meaning they do a combination of the two.

The report looks at foundation density – the number of registered foundations per 10,000 population. For the country as a whole, the figure is 15.2. This varies significantly between cantons – ranging from 43.5 in Basel-Stadt and 34.4 in Zug, which are the country’s most affluent, to 8.8 in Thurgau and 6.8 in Aargau, which are among the least affluent cantons.

Future-proof funding

An announcement from SwissFoundations also describes foundations as “more than just funders”, and increasingly adopting new approaches to partnering with the sector, including through the organisation’s newly-launched Future-Proof Funding Initiative.

These new approaches include collaborating with partners on more open, equal-footing basis; creating an active feedback culture; and working in alliances to create pooled budgets, simplify processes, and share knowledge. They also include alternative financial models such as loans, equity investments and microfinance.

The report’s headline news will be a welcome boost to the sector after a report in January from Swissfundraising and Zewo Foundation said that public donations had dropped by 10% in 2023, to a toal of 2.25bn CHF (€2.42bn).

A Europe-wide study by Philea, released in the spring, showed that Switzerland’s foundations held more assets (€140bn) than any other country in Europe, slightly ahead of the UK (€129bn). However, the countries whose foundations handed out the most money last year were Spain (€17.6bn), France (€16bn) and the UK (€14.1bn).

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Support for Ukraine had led to particularly strong giving in 2022, but 2023’s total is still the second-highest in history, and has more than doubled in the past two decades.

The report, available both in French and in German, shows that 72% of households made a donation in 2023, down from 80% in both 2021 and 2022, and a high of 84% in 2019.

Meanwhile, the median donation remains at the record 400CHF first seen last year, after several years of increases from 300CHF in 2019.

For the first time, Swiss Germans are no longer the most generous community in the country – the number of households in that region who made a donation last year dropped from 87% to 74%. Less dramatic drops were seen in the French speaking community (75% to 66%), and among Italian speakers, who are now the most generous at 76% (82% in 2024).

Environment and animals remains the most popular cause, followed by disability and social and emergency aid, while children and adolescents has dropped out of the top three to fifth overall.

The report notes that animal protection is a particularly popular cause among donors over 70, while those aged 15-34 are particularly drawn to refugee charities.

Overall, the 15-34 age group saw the largest drop in giving last year, with 60% donating in 2023 (78% in 2022), while there were less dramatic drops for those aged 35-54 (72%, down from 82%) and those aged 55-99 (82%, down from 89%).

In an interview included as part of the report, Swissfundraising board member Ruth Wagner says:

“After a very long period of solidarity, Switzerland is generally showing signs of weariness and fatigue in terms of donations: on the one hand, there is the fact that, given the state of the economy, households are more concerned about their own financial security. On the other hand, there is certainly also a growing fatigue and helplessness in the face of an increasingly uncertain and devastated world.”

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Bigler is the head of communications and marketing at Christian aid organisation HEKS/EPER. He initially joined the Swissfundraising committee in 2021, and succeeds Sibylle Spengler who had served on the committee for 12 years, including six as president.

Sibylle Spengler, who steps down after 6 years as president

Bigler will work alongside newly-elected vice-president Fabienne Schmidli, who by day works at the university ZHAW in Zurich. Schmidli first joined the committee in 2020.

Silvia Beyeler of children’s charity SOS-Kinderdorf; Ruth Wagner from the agency one marketing; and Christine Bill from the agency asm Agentur für Sozialmarketing; have also joined the nine-person committee.

Presenting her final annual report to the 50 members in attendance, Spengler noted that Swissfundraising now had 1,065 members, that the organisation again ended the year with a turnover of more than 1m CHF (€1m), and a small profit (7,500 CHF). She added that demand for seminars and meetings was high, and that SwissFundraisingDay in June had attracted more than 400 attendees.

Swissfundraising director Roger Tinner also thanked Spengler for her service and hard work, noting that the membership had more than doubled during her time on the committee.

This suggestion is made in the fifth annual giving report (Swiss German: Spendenreport, French: Rapport sur les dons Suisse) from Swissfundraising and Zewo Foundation, published at the end of 2023.

The headline figure of the report is that the median charitable donation in the country rose for the third consecutive year in 2022, growing 11% to 400 CHF (€424).

In a section on donor loyalty, the report authors note that the overall picture has remained stable over the years, with nearly two-thirds (62%) always giving to the same charities. However, households with children are much less likely to be in this category (45%), compared with households with no children (62%).

Overall, 24% of donors are classified as ‘volatile’, meaning they vary which charities they give to, while the remaining 12% give to a mix of the same and new charities.

Over-70s were more likely than other age groups to be in the ‘volatile’ category (59%), followed by those aged 35-44 (44%), leading the researchers to the conclusion that children and grandchildren lead to different donation behaviours.

The report also noted that 84% of the population made a charitable donation during the year, a figure not seen since 2019, and that digital giving has grown fivefold in five years. However, the number of charitable donations being made by each donor dropped when compared with the previous year.

Donation levels also varied among the country’s three language communities. The most generous was the country’s Swiss German majority, who are nearly two-thirds of the population, with 87% (2021: 83%) making a donation, although the median donation dropped significantly, from 500 CHF to 400 CHF.

Among the near quarter of French-speaking Swiss, the donation ratio remained at 75%, and their median donation has doubled in less than a decade, reaching 400 CHF last year, while the Italian speaking minority jumped from 68% to 83%.

The 55-69 age group is the most generous (93%), followed by 88% of those aged 25-34.

Roger Tinner, Swissfundraising executive director, commented:

“Despite the increasingly tense economic situation, 84% of the Swiss population donated again in 2022: With a 5% increase in donations compared to the previous year, we are now at the same level as before the 2019 pandemic. This is very encouraging.”

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As well as being an EFA founding member, Barbara was an EFA delegate from 2002 to 2009, and a board member from 2006 to 2009.

She was also one of Switzerland’s fundraising pioneers, and a founding member and vice president of Swissfundraising.

Born in 1939 in Kolberg, Poland, throughout her professional life Barbara worked both nationally and internationally as a lecturer and was a sought-after speaker. In particular, she was an expert in direct mail campaigns. In 1998 she published a comprehensive book on the topic, Successful Fundraising with Direct Mail. Strategies that bring money!.

A second book, Professional Handbook of Fundraising, reached several editions and was known throughout the German-speaking world.

Barbara remained active in fundraising consultancy as well as in the Swissfundraising community well past retirement age. She died peacefully at the age of 84 on March 14, in Lausanne.

While many Swiss grant-making foundations already support nonprofits abroad, the survey by StiftungSchweiz found that other foundations are also keen to help in this way but have yet to be approached.

In its Swiss Generosity Abroad study, StiftungSchweiz researchers identified 600 grant-making foundations involved in international giving. 150 were chosen as geographically representative, with 28 responding to a survey – providing a 5% sample for the report.

StiftungSchweiz found that:

• 30% of Swiss grant-making foundations donate directly to organisations based abroad
• 25% donate abroad through organisations based in Switzerland. 30% of these are interested in donating directly to organisations abroad but have not yet been approached
• 45% donate through both organisations based in Switzerland and to those based abroad
• In excess of 150 projects based abroad were funded in 2020 through the 28 Swiss foundations surveyed, with each supporting an average of 5 each. A conservative estimate of the average grant size was €70,000

The report’s findings are broken down into three sections; Facts and Figures, Survey Extrapolations and Estimations and Insights by Dr Peter Buss, founder and CEO of StiftungSchweiz. The study’s approach and methods were also critically appraised by researchers at the University of Geneva – Geneva Centre for Philanthropy (GCP) and the Behavioural Philanthropy Lab.

Commenting, Abel Mon Jardin, StiftungSchweiz director of international development said:

“The number of projects supported abroad and the grants awarded show a high level of willingness on the part of Swiss grant-making foundations to provide support.

“The challenge now is how to get grant-makers and project owners working better together and on a more equal footing.”

StiftungSchweiz surveyed the 28 foundations on the following areas:

• How they work with nonprofit organisations at an international level
• The opportunities for nonprofits to apply for funds from Swiss grant making foundations
• How much funding these foundations provide to those active abroad
• Whether they support nonprofits directly or via a third party
• The goals they pursue in supporting those operating abroad

The study also extrapolated out the findings to the 600 Swiss grant-making foundations involved in international giving.

As a result, StiftungSchweiz estimates that 75% of those giving abroad do so directly to the organisations themselves, and that another 7% are interested in doing so but have yet to be approached. It also estimates that they gave some €38 million in total in 2020, with each one supporting an average 5 projects through a conservative estimate of €12,000 each.

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According to the 2022 Swiss Foundations Report from the Center for Philanthropy Studies, net growth doubled compared to the previous year, although the number of liquidations remained high. In total, Switzerland had 13,524 foundations at the end of 2021.

Zurich saw the greatest number of new foundations in 2021 at 51, followed by Geneva with 48. With a total of 2,232 foundations, Zurich has the most overall, followed by Bern with 1,390. However, the strongest growth was seen in the cantons of Zug, Thurgau and Aargau. At the top, Zug saw an 8% increase.

More key findings

The report also looks at other trends and developments, including the gender split on Swiss foundation boards. Despite a slight increase in the proportion of women, they are still largely underrepresented compared to men. Only 32% of foundation board mandates in Switzerland are held by women, up from 31% in 2020, and just 22% of Swiss foundations have a female president. The share of women in management roles however is higher at 38%.

2021 saw several developments in the Swiss foundation sector, including revisions to foundation law in December 2021, changes to how foundations are supervised in the canton of Zurich, and the rejection of the Noser motion, which challenged the tax exemption status of politically active nonprofits. Upcoming changes to the country’s data protection legislation are also on the horizon, due to be implemented in 2023.

The report notes too a new dynamic in the sector – evident from the figures as well as in the approaches to funding. New models that enable faster action to be taken are increasingly popular, having been put to the test during the pandemic, while the sector is also seeing a rise in foundations moving from investing in projects to investing in organisations based on how they feel about their work.

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