Your donation can do more!

How much you donate is, of course, entirely your own decision. You may find some inspiration in our articles “How much should I donate?” and “Why and how I donate”.

Yes, you can deduct your donation from your taxes in Austria. Effektiv Spenden Österreich (ZVR: 1750302948) is a recognized tax-deductible charity: you can find us under registration number BI-27009 on the Austrian Ministry of Finance’s list of tax-deductible organizations.

What matters is that you actually donate to our Austrian association, not to our Swiss association or our German non-profit GmbH. You can tell by the Austrian flag at the top right of the donation form and, if you pay by bank transfer, by the Austrian bank details.

Unlike in Germany and Switzerland, in Austria we focus entirely on our giving funds (except Democracy and AI), so donations to individual organizations aren’t currently possible. Questions or feedback? Write to us at oesterreich@effektiv-spenden.org.

(If you want to deduct your donation in Germany, Switzerland or Czechia, which is possible in all of these countries, please select the relevant country at the top right of the donation form.)

If you donate as a private individual in Austria, there is hardly anything you need to do. Just leave “Make donation tax-deductible in Austria” ticked when you donate, and give us your date of birth. We then report your donations directly to the tax office by the end of February of the following year, and the amounts are automatically deducted from your taxable income in your tax assessment (up to 10% of your income). If you want to change your choice or aren’t sure what you selected, please contact us at oesterreich@effektiv-spenden.org or +43 1 266 01 38. You can find more about the automatic tax deduction of donations on the website of the Austrian Ministry of Finance (in German). Please check in your donor account that your name, address and date of birth are correct, so that we can report your donation to the tax office correctly.

If you donate as a company in Austria, you automatically receive a donation receipt by email at the end of February of the following year, covering all of your company’s donations that year. You can generally deduct these donations as business expenses from corporate income tax (up to 10% of your profit). Unlike donations from private individuals, we don’t report company donations to the tax office: your company declares them as expenses itself.

For donations from Germany, Switzerland and Czechia, whether as a private individual or a company, you also automatically receive a donation receipt by email at the end of February of the following year.

Yes! Just choose Bank transfer as the payment method in the last step of the donation form. You will then receive our bank details and can transfer your donation. Please use your personal payment reference (starting with “ES-”) so that we can match your transfer automatically.

We use donations to our giving funds in full to carry out outstandingly effective projects together with partner organizations, and keep nothing of your donation for ourselves. However, the payment providers we work with charge fees for credit card and SEPA direct debit payments, and these are deducted from your donation. For donations within Austria, they are:

• Bank transfer: free within the SEPA area
• SEPA direct debit: €0.35
• Credit card: 1.2% + €0.25 for European cards (3.25% + €0.25 for international cards)

For amounts under €10,000, we recommend SEPA direct debit, which is particularly easy for us to process, and for amounts over €10,000 a free bank transfer. For security reasons, we only offer direct debit for amounts under €10,000, and credit cards aren’t advisable for large amounts because of the cost.

Similar fees apply at every organization that collects donations. We have negotiated with all payment providers and get particularly favorable terms for non-profits.

We fund our own work through donations too, completely separately. You can read more about this on our transparency page.

Log in to your donor account. There you can change the amount or how it is split, pause your recurring donation or cancel it at any time, without giving a reason.

Do you donate by standing order? Then the payment runs through your bank, so you can only change the amount, pause or cancel there, by adjusting, suspending or deleting the standing order. Please still let us know in your donor account if you change the amount or cancel. Otherwise you will receive an automated payment reminder, which you can simply ignore.

Prefer email or phone? We’re still here for you: oesterreich@effektiv-spenden.org or +43 1 266 01 38.

Effektiv Spenden is made possible by private funders. Their support covers all the costs of our educational work and of running the platform. This allows us to use your donation to our giving funds in full for effective projects with our partners. Of course, we also welcome donations to us as a platform. You can find out more about how we are funded on our transparency page.