Questions and answers about donations
Donate
You have the option to donate to various issues but also to a specific project. If you make a donation to the purpose ‘Where it is needed most’, you enable us to use your donation where help is most urgently needed.
You can download the direct debit form at the bottom of the page. You can use this form for a bank or post office account.
Yes, you can give a donation as a gift. To do this, transfer the amount that you wish to gift. Indicate in the message or comments field that this is a gift donation. Please let us know the name and address of the person to whom you are gifting the donation, so that we can send our thank-you letter to the right address.
Sponsorships
If you wish to cancel your sponsorship, you can let us know by sending an e-mail to patenschaften@caritas.ch or sending us a letter. No specific notice period is required.
As a Caritas sponsor, you support specific projects and not an individual child. This means that the monthly amount you donate helps to support a large number of children and their families. If you require more information, please refer to the ‘Child sponsorships’ information sheet produced by Zewo.
Each year, you will receive a report describing the progress and successes in the individual projects. Please let us know if you would like any further information.
Donating online
Yes, your data is transmitted in SSL-encrypted form. An SSL connection (Secure Socket Layer) is an encrypted network connection between a server and a client (browser). Online donations are made using donation solutions provided by RaiseNow AG. RaiseNow is fully compliant with all of the financial authorities’ guidelines and IT security standards: RaiseNow is PCI DSS certified (Payment Card Industry Data Security-Standard) and all transactions are securely transmitted via SSL. Our service providers may use the information purely to perform their tasks; they must be compliant with Switzerland’s strict data privacy protection rules.
Depending on the payment method selected, different transaction fees are incurred for your online donation:
- American Express: 1.25 %
- Apple Pay: 2.9 % + CHF 0.30 per transaction
- Google Pay: 2.9 % + CHF 0.30 per transaction
- Mastercard: 1.25 %
- PayPal: 3.4 % + CHF 0.55 per transaction
- PostFinance: 1.3 %
- Swiss Direct Debit: CHF 0.45 per transaction
- Twint: 1.3 %
- Visa: 1.25 %
- Payments at the post office counter: CHF 1.20 (up to CHF 50), 1.60 (up to CHF 100), 2.35 (up to CHF 1000), 3.95 (up to CHF 10’000)
All digital payment methods also incur a charge of 0.5 percent from our partner RaiseNow.
All online donations and payments via QR invoices with reference numbers are processed automatically at Caritas Switzerland, reducing the amount of manual work.
How your donations are used
At Caritas Switzerland, the administrative costs are 7.9 percent of each donation on average. This covers the costs for human resources, accounting, IT, infrastructure, fundraising and advertising. 92.1 percent of the money donated goes to the projects.
Your donation is used for the purpose that you choose. This may be an issue, such as ‘water’, or a specific project that you wish to support. Compliance with the intended purpose is regularly reviewed by our statutory auditors BDO Visura and Zewo. If you do not select a specific purpose for your donation, we use the money where it is most urgently needed.
Caritas Switzerland is regularly inspected by external bodies. We also evaluate all projects on the ground. The independent statutory auditors BDO Visura examine the accounts of Caritas Switzerland. Caritas is also a member of Zewo. Zewo regularly checks whether its member organisations are using the donations they receive in line with the donors’ intentions. And Caritas provides quality: the aid agency is ISO-certified (SQS ISO 9001 certificate) and it is continuously optimising its services. Caritas was also the first aid agency to be awarded the NPO Label for Management Excellence, a special award for non-profit organisations.
No. Caritas Switzerland has been funding both its political work and its information, awareness-raising and publicity work from its own resources for many years. Caritas Switzerland receives from the SDC an annual programme contribution for its international work, contributions to specific projects and funding for mandates. In 2021, the SDC funding represented 11.6 percent of the total funding.
Zewo certification
Zewo is the certification body for charitable non-profit organisations (NPOs) collecting donations in Switzerland.
Zewo ensures that charitable NPOs use the donations they receive effectively, economically and for the designated purpose. It has adopted 21 standards to help achieve this. These standards require NPOs to handle donations in a trustworthy way and provide information to donors transparently.
Caritas Switzerland has been Zewo-certified since 1942. The Zewo quality seal is a sign of trustworthy aid agencies. They are awarded the quality seal once they have passed a test carried out by Zewo and they are then regularly inspected to ensure that they are using the funds donated to them responsibly.
Tax
Yes, all donations to Caritas can be offset against federal taxation and that of most cantons. Caritas automatically issues a statement detailing the donations made the previous year by mid-January. This can also be requested at any time.
Data protection
No, Caritas Switzerland will never share your address with third parties. Please consult this page for further information about data protection:
Advertising and mailings
We use advertising to fund our projects through incoming donations and help people in need. We make every effort to do this as efficiently and effectively as possible. We fulfil our environmental obligations by using FSC paper. We believe that the largest possible proportion of each Swiss Franc donated should go to the people in need. Careful handling of donations is therefore a top priority.
We can adapt the frequency of mailings to your preferences. Please fill out the contact form to let us know your preferences.
You can receive further information about our work via our electronic channels. You can subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media.
Unaddressed mailings from Zewo-certified organisations such as Caritas are classed as ‘official mailings’. Swiss Post delivers these mail items to all letterboxes, even those with ‘stop’ stickers. These mail items are therefore given equal status to mail items from federal authorities, administrative bodies and public companies, and those from cantons and communes, and from political parties. For more information, please read the detailed explanations from Swiss Post.
To offset natural losses in our donor community, Caritas sometimes uses the services of address list providers. It is possible that we obtained your address from a service provider. If you want to stop this happening, you can add your name to the Robinson list with the Swiss Direct Marketing Association (SDV). That will ensure that you do not receive any more addressed advertising from SDV members.
Contact
Donor service
Caritas SwitzerlandAdligenswilerstrasse 15
P.O. Box
CH-6002 Lucerne
+41 41 419 24 19spendenservice@caritas.ch