The donations were collected by L’ARRONDI, a microdonations solution from MicroDon that lets shoppers round up their payments to include a small donation, with the figures released last month. A record amount, it brings the total raised since its 2013 launch to more than €28 million, donated to nearly 800 associations and foundations.

L’ARRONDI is now used by 37 brands across 9,375 stores in the country, including Franprix, Nature & Découvertes, Sephora, Bonobo Jeans, Maisons du Monde, Monoprix, Celio, Printemps, Orange, Truffaut, Picard, Auchan and Fnac.

Usage has climbed steeply since its launch year, when L’ARRONDI collected 11,000 donations, raising a total of €19,000. This jumped the following year, in 2014, with 194,000 donations collected to a value of €126,000.

The annual amount raised first broke the €1 million mark in 2017, and growth has continued every year since then despite the pandemic, with around 5 donations now being made per second.

In fact, the pandemic years saw many brands use it to support vulnerable groups and respond to emergency situations. Picard, for example, used L’ARRONDI to help students impacted by the crisis, while Franprix, Monoprix or Naturalia chose to direct donations raised through it to emergency funds such as the Fondation Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) and the Secours populaire français during the peak of the Covid-19 crisis, with a  total of €505,730 collected. Today,  Printemps, Citadium, Gémo, Bocage, Eram and Franprix. are using it to help the Ukrainian population.

2021 also saw a further record broken, with €1.5 million collected in December – the highest ever monthly total.

L’ARRONDI’s use continues to evolve, with the first joint campaign launching at the end of 2020, when Mastercard and Cora ran a fundraising campaign for World Food Programme, followed by Henkel and its Diadermine brand joining forces with the Auchan brand at the end of 2021 to support Force Femmes.

According to microDON, this means that L’ARRONDI is likely to become one of the 5 biggest fundraising services in France.

Photo by RODNAE Productions

Individuals are responsible for 60% of this total, according to the study, Panorama national des générosités, with donations mentioned in tax returns for 2015 amounting to €2.62 billion, up 70% since 2006. 5.7 million households declared donations in 2015, representing 15% of tax paying households.

According to Fondation de France, the increase is the result of both more households declaring donations, which has risen by 20%, and an increase in the average donation. This has risen 44% in the past decade from €320 to €460, the study says.

Corporate donations are also increasing, it found, with the estimated total expenditure for corporate philanthropy reaching an estimated €2.9 billion in 2015, of which €1.6 billion is declared expenditure and €1.3 billion is an estimate of undeclared expenditure.

In addition, a study of 300 beneficiary organisations estimates legacies amount to nearly one billion euros a year. Nearly 50% of legacies go to foundations, with the three most popular causes being medical research (23%), education (13%) and solidarity (13%).

The study also looked at methods of giving and shows that collections in public spaces or on private sites and big events such as telethons provide at least €47.5 million annually, while donations through crowdfunding have also increased significantly over the last three years in France, from €13.7 million in 2014 to €37.4 million in 2016.

Micro donations, such as the rounding up of cash or online purchases are still low in France, but growing, raising €1 million in 2015 and €1.6 million in 2016, according to figures quoted in the study from MicroDon.

2015 is the most recent year for which all the sources quoted in the report are currently available, including tax figures.

The full report can be downloaded from the Fondation de France site.

The Spend-O-Mat was installed in May this year, and works in a similar way to a cash dispenser. Instead of giving cash however, it allows users to donate to the church with their credit or debit card. Donations  of up to 150 Swiss francs can be given through the machine, which also issues a receipt.

The church is working with Basel’s state bank Basler Kantonalbank to provide the service, which is managed through an online portal. This records the amounts donated and the resulting data can be accessed via a standard internet browser.

The machine is an import from Sweden where it is known as the Kollektomat and raises millions of Krona for churches every year, reaching a total of over 50 million Krona in 2013. While in Switzerland, customers generally still use cash in shops and restaurants, as well as for collections in the church as cashless payments become more popular, it is hoped that this will encourage more people to give in this way.