Times are good for organizations that rely on donations: More than two billion Swiss francs were donated last year, twice as much as in 2003. An incredible 81% of households in Switzerland report that they make donations every year, compared to just 40% in Germany.

Swissfundraising bears co-responsibility for this boom. Roger Tinner, the CEO of the association, cheerfully opens the door to his charming office in an old building near the St. Gallen train station and starts right off with a number, which won’t be the last one this afternoon: “We had less than 400 members when I took over the directorship here in 2007 – today we have 1,000.”

The association is on a mission to professionalize fundraising. To do that, it provides educational programs and advanced training courses and organizes events. Members of Swissfundraising have recently shown increased interest in the new payment possibilities with QR-bills and for eBill Donations. “Both offer advantages for aid organizations,” Tinner says, “and both entail a few challenges.”

Donating with QR-bills and eBill Is Very Easy

The simplification of the payment procedure is an extremely positive development, Tinner says. “Scanning a QR-bill or clicking to approve an eBill Donations request is very easy to do; donations can thus be elicited much more directly than before.” Moreover, donations by eBill offer the added advantage of allowing organizations to send their requests for donations directly to donors’ e-banking portals. This way, “people are made aware of a donation opportunity at the right moment, when they’re in the process of paying their bills,” Tinner explains.

A look into who donates the most in Switzerland quickly ends up at the baby boomer generation, i.e., people in the 55-plus age bracket: 85% of them donate money every year, and no one makes bigger donations than baby boomers. But members of the older stratum of this generation still like to do their invoice-paying at the post office counter. That, of course, can still be done with a QR-bill, “but you can’t specify the purpose of the donation at the post office counter,” Tinner says. A second issue, he adds, is memorial donations. You used to be able to use a blank payment slip for them, but that’s no longer possible with QR-bills. Tinner is confident, however, that even the elderly generation will grow accustomed to the new means of payment and will come to appreciate its advantages: “We have made enormous investments in training, and many member organizations have conducted tests. The very important Christmas season is just around the corner, so we want to be sure that everything runs smoothly.”

Declared Dead Twenty Years Ago: The Fundraising Letter

Baby boomers are a pet subject of Tinner’s. At 61, he’s a boomer himself, though he cuts a younger figure in his ON sneakers, green slacks, and blue shirt – and with hardly a gray hair on his head. Talking about his own generation, he says that “we should cash in on it as much as possible over the next 20 years because no generation in history has ever earned as much and inherited as much as baby boomers have.”

And what’s the best way to reach boomers? “Half of donors report that their donations began with a fundraising letter,” Tinner says. Fundraising letters were declared dead 20 years ago, he adds, but printed material has actually tended to gain significance amid advancing digitalization, he explains, because “it makes a more serious and dignified impression than an e-mail does.” Outside Switzerland, by the way, fundraising letters play a much smaller role than they do in this country, presumably due in part to stricter data protection laws in many places abroad, Tinner says.

Setting Up an NPO in a Single Day

But despite his praise for traditional fundraising letters, Tinner has rolled with the times. “With all of the digital tools available these days, you can found an NPO start-up in an afternoon and start fundraising that same evening,” he says. The overall share of digital donations to Swiss non-profit organizations is only in the single-digit percent range at present, but has been growing at a fast pace over the past two years.

So, a modern NPO would be well advised, he says, to set up digital channels to address and inspire younger donors. But “there’s a risk of spreading yourself too thin,” Tinner cautions, because “setting up and maintaining social media channels is very costly and time-consuming, and you’re competing with the world’s biggest brands for attention.” Tinner therefore recommends enlisting influencers who have a lot of reach and credibility with the target audience, and he would advise commercial enterprises to do the same.

“The difference between a non-profit organization and a commercial enterprise has narrowed in any case,” Tinner says. Fundraising organizations are being run ever more professionally, and for-profit enterprises are increasingly resorting to fundraising, he explains. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many theaters, restaurants, and soccer clubs sought information from Swissfundraising on how a fundraising drive works, Tinner recounts.

Fees are a big issue for organizations – fundraisers want to ensure that as many francs as possible reach their intended destination. “TWINT, eBill, and QR-bills score relatively well here,” Tinner says, but certain credit cards and PayPal are more expensive, he adds. He recommends that “an NPO nevertheless would be well advised to offer multiple payment options and to make the payment process as simple as possible, since there’s nothing worse than someone aborting a payment because the procedure is too complicated.”

The Most Pins Sold

Tinner was long the head of communications at the University of St. Gallen and afterwards ran a number of communications agencies. He did not come directly from a fundraising background, but “back when I was a schoolboy, I was a very enthusiastic seller of pins for the Swiss Sports Aid Foundation,” he says. His position at Swissfundraising came about through happenstance: During the 2000s, Tinner’s previous employer had acquired an agency that ran Swissfundraising. “When the person doing that job left the position,” Tinner recounts, “it was an open-and-shut case: I had to take over.”

And how does he go about donating himself? “When I give a homeless person at the train station 20 francs,” Tinner says self-critically, “I get a feeling like I just saved the world.” He otherwise makes donations when he knows someone personally and is convinced of the good cause, he says. But he confesses that, like in most marriages, his wife is in charge of the bulk of donations and donates “much more systematically than I do.”