Schweizer Glückskette - Praise and Criticism

Swiss Solidarity is a success story, especially when you consider the volume of donations raised and distributed. But what about Swiss Solidarity’s claim to ensure that the funds used have a high impact?

In 2023 alone, Swiss Solidarity collected over 54 million francs in Switzerland for people in need. In the same year, 344 projects in 40 countries were supported with a volume of almost CHF 70 million. The focus of the aid was on projects in Ukraine, Turkey, Syria, East Africa and Switzerland. At over CHF 30 million, earthquake relief in Syria and Turkey accounted for the largest share by far.

These are large sums that must be used responsibly. This is also the view of those responsible for Swiss Solidarity who write prominently on the homepage of their website: “We consider very carefully which projects we fund with your donations, in order to ensure that the people in need get the best possible help.”

The annual report can certainly provide information on how quality assurance is implemented in detail. As the 2023 annual report is not yet available at the time of writing, we will make do with the 2022 report. However, there are no specific references to quality or impact monitoring. Perhaps a look at the financial statements will help. Expenditure items could be listed there that would allow conclusions to be drawn about, for example, the commissioning of external quality auditors. This is not the case. So let’s finish our search by looking at the website. There we find the page: “Good Governance.” Here we learn that the at least 25 partner charities are reviewed every four years “employing strict criteria”. We are not told what these criteria are. Reference is also made to project visits and evaluations.

Evaluations as a guarantee of quality

We are interested in the evaluations because, according to Swiss Solidarity, they are carried out by independent external experts. In total, three evaluations are presented here. The first relates to aid following the tsunami in 2004. Another evaluates aid following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010. And a third summarizes in a total of three sentences that people from affected areas in Nepal report their impressions of aid measures to external experts. In view of the presumably several thousand aid projects that Swiss Solidarity has financed since 2004 alone, the total of three publicly accessible evaluations (there are actually only two, as no further details are available on the evaluation from Nepal) seems extremely manageable.

But perhaps the task itself is unmanageable. How do you verify the quality of more than 300 projects from more than 25 aid organizations in 40 countries? Especially since they change every year in response to current disasters and crises? Doesn’t Swiss Solidarity face an impossible task from the outset, especially since it primarily supports very large and therefore extremely complex organizations, such as Caritas Switzerland (over CHF 13 million in 2022), the Swiss Red Cross (over CHF 6.5 million) and the relief organization of the Protestant churches in Switzerland (over CHF 5 million)? We have explained why the funding of complex charities poses fundamental problems in detail here .

Another structural problem could be the fact that Swiss Solidarity, in addition to helping the needy in Switzerland, also focuses on providing aid in the event of acute disasters. Examples include the war in Ukraine, the recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria or, as mentioned above, the 2004 tsunami and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The latter, in particular, is an example of how a media-effective disaster can mobilise billions of dollars in aid, which can far exceed the absorption capacity of a small country like Haiti or, in the case of Syria, often never even reach the country for which it was intended. On the other hand, it is the ‘silent disasters’ that do not make the mainstream news that can save more lives and alleviate more suffering with the same resources. We have taken a closer look at them here .

Perhaps the real problem lies one level deeper, in a diffuse and perhaps inadequate understanding of impact. Impact is not when money “arrives” somewhere and local people say they are happy about it. Impact is what actually changes and to what extent. Research clearly shows that projects often vary in their impact by a factor of 10 or even 100. Especially when resources are limited - and they always are - it is even more important to understand exactly where they can have the greatest impact. Especially when, as in many disaster relief projects, it is a matter of life and death. We have explored the concept of impact in more detail here .

Aspiration and reality

What is the conclusion to be drawn from these considerations? On the one hand, they certainly don’t change the fact that Swiss Solidarity, which has apparently mobilized more than 2 billion Swiss francs for a good cause over the past 75 years, is a success story. Year after year, they make the Swiss people aware that many people are dependent on their help and motivate them to participate with their own donations.

But it is also true that it is simply not possible to properly monitor the success and effectiveness of hundreds of projects carried out every year by extremely complex organizations in a large number of countries. I believe that those responsible at Swiss Solidarity should face up to this fact. Either by reducing the number of funded projects to a much smaller number, so that rigorous quality control is actually possible, hopefully separating the wheat from the chaff. Or by no longer pretending that the projects funded by many Swiss people are actually monitored by them and checked for effectiveness.

(Source: Swiss Solidarity website (swiss-solidarity.org), annual reports and blog posts, all retrieved on 18.04.2024)

About the author

Stefan Shaw

Founder & Director of Donor Advisory

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I am one of the founders of Effektiv Spenden. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to send me an email. I will get right back to you.