It wasn’t so long ago that a virus had the world on tenterhooks, and its name wasn’t coronavirus. The line below didn’t appear in an obscure publication for conspiracy theories, but was printed in Switzerland’s most-read newspaper, the tabloid Blick: “AIDS, the deadly ‘sex disease,’ is scarier than the plague and more mysterious than cancer.”

The good news: Compared to 1986, the year that the quote above comes from, the situation in the “no. 1 AIDS country in Europe” (another quote taken from Blick) has changed profoundly. In 1986, a record total of over 3,000 people were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Switzerland, but since 2017 the number has dropped to less than 500 people per year. Moreover, HIV has long since ceased to be a death sentence and, when properly treated, isn’t infectious anymore.

The not-so-good news: For the Swiss AIDS Federation, an organization that has been engaged in prevention work, patient advocacy, and as an ombudsman for those with HIV/AIDS who have experienced discrimination for four decades now, the reduction in the number of cases has made it much harder to motivate people to donate money. Consequently, donations have fallen by 50% over the last decade, and the aid organization has had to lay off some employees.

Help for Hundreds of People

We pay a visit to the nondescript office building in Zurich Altstetten that houses the Swiss AIDS Federation on an icy, overcast day. The door opens, and suddenly the mood is far from gloomy. Andreas Lehner, the managing director of the Swiss AIDS Federation, greets us with a hearty handshake and a broad smile and says, “Hi, call me Andi.” Then he talks about his organization with a passion that one might expect from an artist, but not from a functionary. He says about the past few years: “It was painful, but we needed to cut costs.” Now the organization has to look ahead to the future and tap new sources of revenue, he adds, because “our work is still enormously important and makes a big difference to the lives of hundreds of people.”

The Low-Threshold Way to Donate

On his search for new benefactors, Lehner came across eBill Donations and instantly became enthusiastic. The Swiss AIDS Federation was one of the first non-profit organization to use this new eBill function. “We have high expectations for eBill Donations,” Lehner says, “because it enables us to reach donors where they pay their invoices: on their online banking portals.” Lehner believes that the willingness to donate is particularly strong when a person is already in a paying frame of mind and can easily make a donation with just a couple of clicks. “That’s much simpler than opening a fundraising letter, setting it aside, and transferring the money later on,” he says.

Lehner is 55 years old, looks like he’s 45, and acts like he’s 35. His uniform consists of sneakers, jeans, and a sweater, and he sports a three-day beard and a tattoo. His casual look is no accident: Lehner joined the Swiss AIDS Federation in 2014 and headed a prevention program for five years, during which time he was “out in the fresh air” a lot, as he puts it. He wanted to reach people where they “live, love, and work,” so he visited clubs, made house calls, and dropped in on narcotics dispensaries.

Returning to eBill Donations, the head of the Swiss AIDS Federation sees an additional benefit: the fact that donation requests are paperless and therefore “more sustainable than classic fundraising letters.” In addition, he says, there are a number of cost advantages because eBill Donations eliminates printing and mailing expenses.

Reaching New Target Groups

Furthermore, “recurrent donations can be set up very easily on the eBill portal,” Lehner says. That’s a welcome innovation, he explains, because that way you don’t have to keep on soliciting the same donors every year. He estimates that more than 2.7 million potential eBill users can be reached through eBill Donations. “We believe that we can reach an entirely new target group this way,” he adds.

Lehner’s smartwatch blinks repeatedly during our conversation, but he ignores all of the notifications and concentrates on the interview. Nonetheless, it becomes evident that he’s a techie, and he even calls himself a digital early adopter. However, his donor base is just as analog-minded as the managing director is digital-minded. “Over 80% of all donations still come to us via conventional fundraising letters,” Lehner says. He thinks that people’s preference for this way of donating partly has to do with the donors’ advanced age. “That’s why,” Lehner says, “it’s all the more important for us to set up digital donation channels today so that we can communicate at eye level with a younger target group tomorrow.”

The Swiss AIDS Federation already operates a number of successful social media channels, Lehner explains, but doesn’t yet use them consistently for donation drives. In his view, a possible step in that direction could involve the targeted use of influencers who have a lot of followers and a high level of credibility among potential donors.

Be it digital or analog, and regardless of whether the donors are young or old, each year the Swiss AIDS Federation collects most of its donations around the first of December, also known as World AIDS Day, which was established in 1988 and is observed worldwide. “It’s very valuable to have an annual designated day because it’s becoming harder to call attention to HIV/AIDS,” Lehner says. A total of 650,000 people died from AIDS-related causes around the world in 2021, compared with 1.7 million in 2011. That marks enormous progress, but it is still a very high death toll: 650,000 equals the combined population of the cities of Zurich and Bern. And one last comparison: More than 40 million people have died from HIV-related causes to date, whereas around 6.7 million have died from COVID-19.