Swiss digital donations increase by 14%, says RaiseNow report
Howard Lake | 28 November 2016 | News
The volume of digital donations to charity by people in Switzerland continues to grow, up by 14% in 2015, according to the second Digital Fundraising Study Switzerland. However, the proportion of donations via digital channel “remains low”, say the authors.
The second annual edition of the Digital Fundraising Study Switzerland examined the giving habits of the Swiss during 2015. Conducted by online fundraising platform RaiseNow and Amazee Metrics, it analysed 120,000 transactions with a donation volume of over 12.5m Swiss francs from more than 100 organisations.
For this report more than twice as many organisations were consulted compared to the original research – 20 organisations in 2015, of which 13 are certified by Swiss watchdog foundation ZEWO, compared to nine in 2014.
It found that the proportion of digital donations from from 2.24% to 2.55% in 2015, an increase of 13.9%. The proportion of digital giving was calculated by dividing the total number of private donations (over CHF 262m) by the volume of digital donations (CHF 6.7m) from 20 Swiss charities.
Key findings
This years Study presents more than 15 key figures demonstrating how the Swiss donate digitally.
- In all categories of charity (disaster, environment, health etc), the average donation was marginally lower than in previous years (CHF 112.70 compared to CHF 114.37).
- Disasters and overseas aid charities secured the highest average donations compared to other categories at CHF 141.60, but this was explained in part by significant giving in response to the Nepal earthquake.
- Credit cards remain the most popular method of payment for online donations in Switzerland, ahead of PostFinance (debit cards and online banking), pay-in slips (for pledges made online), SMS/text giving, and PayPal.
- Regular giving consists mostly of monthly or annual payments. Quarterly and semestrial donations are made, but at a lower volume.
- The most popular days of the week for giving are Tuesday and Wednesday, with less activity at the weekend.
Marco Zaugg, CEO of RaiseNow, commented on this year’s findings, saying:
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“The positive trend from the previous year has been confirmed. We can once again see a double-digit growth in the share of digital donations, even if this does not fully meet our expectations.
“The second Digital Fundraising Study Switzerland has confirmed trends that were already evident in the first edition of the study: credit card payments are, once again, the most commonly used method of payment for online donations. Donations are made throughout the day, during work and leisure hours, and the weekdays with the highest average donation amounts are Wednesdays (CHF 130) and Sundays (CHF 127).”
He added:
“The biggest surprise from the Digital Fundraising Study 2016 was the confirmation of our previous hypotheses that online donations set to recur monthly achieve a significantly higher total sum within a year than donations set to recur annually.”
Giving Tuesday in Switzerland
The Digital Fundraising Study Switzerland was published the day before Giving Tuesday, the global giving day, which will be marked in Switzerland for the first time.
You can download the second Digital Fundraising Study Switzerland in PDF from RaiseNow.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.