Switzerland For Swiss taxpayers only

To make a donation that is tax-deductible in Germany, please visit this website (German version).

We enable donors who pay taxes in Switzerland to simply and safely support effective charities all over the world. We regularly award grants to partner organizations in the effective altruism movement, most of which operate in the United States. By specifying a desired purpose when making a donation to EAF below, donors can also claim their support for these organizations for tax purposes, even if they are not residents of the same country as the charity. We explain the details here.

  1. 1 Amount
  2. 2 Payment
  3. 3 Finish

We provide this service and all the necessary infrastructure (e.g. legal security and donations processing) free of charge (except for payment provider fees, which we have no influence over). We believe that this is a cost-effective way to increase donations to the world’s best charities. It is very important for some donors to be able to claim donations for tax purposes. Without this service, the money would not be donated at all or given to less effective organizations. Even if the donors would have donated in any case, it is likely they would have given less.

The minimum donation amounts help us reduce the overhead involved in processing donations. We recommend donating smaller amounts directly to the individual charities.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can support the following international EA charities via EAF:

To choose which charities to support, we use the insights of the independent charity evaluators GiveWell and Animal Charity Evaluators, the international effective altruism movement, as well as our own research.

  • You can support the charities and projects above either through a one-off donation or through a regular monthly donation. EAF offers this service free of charge.  If you want to donate smaller amounts, or if you don’t need a tax receipt for your donation, you can donate directly to the organization of your choice.
  • You can support EAF either through unrestricted donations or through earmarked donations. Unrestricted donations allow us to undertake activities where we expect the greatest value, and where there is the most room for more funding. These donations are always used for EAF’s projects and operations.
  1. Registration: You should share your donation preferences with us through online registration in order for us to correctly allocate your donation.
  2. Transfer: After registering your donation, the website will display the different payment options. For small donations, we encourage you to pay by credit card or direct debit, since bank transfers require more effort to match.
  3. Transfer to charities: We will transfer your donation to your chosen charity twice a year.

For tax purposes, we send donation receipts once a year. See the answer below.

Please fill out the registration form once for every organization you wish to support.

If you are donating via bank transfer, you can set up one single transfer for the sum of your donations. Please copy all respective reference codes into the transfer purpose field so we can correctly allocate your donation.

As long as your donation is made to a corporation with tax-deductible status in your country, your donations can be claimed as tax-deductible. This is also true if the donation is granted out to another organization afterward. Currently, we can offer tax-deductible donations in Switzerland. You can find our tax exemption documents here.

EAF sends a single receipt via email at the beginning of the year, which includes all your donations in the preceding year, as long as your donations totaled at least 100.– and were made to EAF directly. We can only issue receipts if all fields in the registration form – including the address field – were filled out. Donation receipts are issued in the name of the account holder from which the donation is made. If you don’t get your receipt by February, contact us at donate@ea-foundation.org. Keep in mind that a donation is included in a given year if we receive the donation in that year, independently of when you make the transfer. Please keep this in mind for donations via bank transfer made in late December, since they could reach our accounts in January.

We do not charge any fees for processing your donations. However, some payment processors charge a small fee that is deducted from your donation:

  • Bank transfer: typically free of charge, although your bank may charge for international transfers
  • Direct debit: 1%, capped at 2 euros
  • Credit card: 2-3%
  • PayPal: 2.5% for CHF donations, 5.2% for other currencies
  • Skrill: 3.3%
  • Bitcoin: 1%

You can find detailed information about our activities and goals as well as our financial situation on our transparency site. EAF’s finances are checked annually by an independent auditor. EAF is also subject to the observation of the Confederate Foundation Advisory Body in Switzerland.

If you would like to stay up to date with our activities, sign up for our newsletter (currently in German only) or follow us on social media via Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

EAF transfers contributions twice a year to external charities, typically in February and August. For legal reasons, EAF withholds the right to decide on the final use of the donations. In practice, however, we respect donors’ wishes and transfer the entirety of their donations to their selected organizations.

We give the charity you select your contact details so that the organization can thank you directly. However, whether they choose to do so is up to them. If you’d like to contact the organization to inquire about your donation, please note that it can take up to 8 months to distribute a donation from our accounts, due to the semi-annual schedule of our regranting program.

To change the allocation or amount of your monthly donation, please fill in the donation registration form again with your updated preferences. For donations via bank transfer, you can then adjust the standing order with the new reference number / purpose.

If you wish to cancel or change your monthly direct debit or credit card donation, please send us an email at donate@ea-foundation.org.

You can update your personal details when registering a new donation via our website. Alternatively, you can send us an email at donate@ea-foundation.org.

EAF only collects personal details necessary for the donation process. For instance, we need your contact details (email and postal address) to send an annual tax receipt. We keep your personal details strictly confidential. If you support an external charity or make a donation to us via an external charity, we will pass on your donation and contact details to that organization only with your explicit consent. You can find more information on this topic in our Privacy Policy.

Please get in touch with us at donate@ea-foundation.org. We’ll do our best to answer within two working days.