The Zewo seal of approval: a critique

Updated: October 2026 · Figures: Zewo donation statistics 2025

In short: The Zewo seal of approval confirms that an organization meets 21 standards on governance, transparency, accounting and the use of funds. It is proof of sound management, not a comparison of effectiveness. With the Zewo Impact Tool, introduced in 2025, Zewo has taken a step towards a stronger focus on impact: charities can use it to plan and measure their progress against goals they set themselves. What is still missing, however, is a comparative assessment of which organization achieves more with donations.

Also, the Zewo seal of approval plays no role in an organization’s tax exemption.

According to Zewo’s estimates, about two thirds of the money donated in Switzerland goes to organizations that carry the Zewo seal of approval. In 2025, that was CHF 1.55 billion out of a total of around CHF 2.3 billion (in German).

The seal also matters when people decide where to give. Among donors who gave more than 200 francs in total, 61 percent know the Zewo seal. Of those, 69 percent always or often look for it when they donate. That is about four in ten larger donors (population survey by the LINK Institute in 2025, commissioned by Zewo, in German).

This shows how much weight the seal carries. That makes it all the more unfortunate that the question that should really come first when donating is not part of Zewo’s audit mandate: where your donation does the most good. If you want to know where each franc can help as many people or animals in need as possible, you have to look elsewhere.

What the Zewo seal of approval is

The Zentrale Auskunftsstelle für Wohlfahrtsunternehmungen, known simply as Zewo since 1990, began its work in 1934 and has awarded its seal of approval since the early 1940s. Much like the German DZI donation seal and the Austrian Seal of Approval for Donations, it recognizes charities that, in Zewo’s words, use donations “economically, effectively and for the designated purpose”. At the end of 2025, around 500 organizations (in German) carried the seal, including well-known ones such as Helvetas, Pro Juventute and the Swiss Cancer League.

The auditor is paid by the audited

To get the seal, a non-profit organization (NPO) has to undergo a paid audit by Zewo. According to Zewo’s fee rules, the audit is billed at CHF 150 per hour, plus an annual license fee of up to CHF 13,000. The flat fee for the initial audit is CHF 2,500. Zewo itself says a first-time certification typically costs around CHF 5,000.

We don’t know of any case in which this conflict of interest has affected whether the seal was awarded. Still, we take a critical view of the fact that, as with the German DZI, the auditor is paid by the organizations it audits and therefore depends on them financially. In 2025, CHF 1.17 million of Zewo’s CHF 1.30 million in operating income (in German) came from awarding the seal, around 90 percent.

Zewo checks standards, not impact

Above all, though, the Zewo seal is not about finding the best charities. It is about confirming that they comply with the 21 Zewo standards. These are genuinely important standards on integrity, transparency and efficiency. When it comes to efficiency, however, the focus is on the share of administrative costs, which in our view says little. Zewo uses this logic itself when it speaks to donors: according to Zewo, certified charities spend an average of 81 francs out of every 100 on projects, 12 francs on administration and 7 francs on fundraising (Spendenreport 2025, in German, based on 2020 data). That answers the question of whether a donation arrives. It doesn’t answer what it achieves.

There is a separate standard for impact. Standard 10 requires an organization to be impact-oriented: it should define impact goals, regularly check whether it reaches them, and report on impact publicly. Whether an organization actually achieves impact, that is, whether the living conditions of the people it serves have improved, is not something Zewo checks itself. And even these requirements have been applied unevenly: Zewo says that among smaller organizations and those working within Switzerland, it could see only partial progress.

The Zewo Impact Tool: progress, with limits

Zewo has responded. In January 2025 it launched the Zewo Impact Tool (ZIT). With it, organizations build an impact model, set goals and indicators, and document their progress. The tool is free for certified organizations and can serve as evidence for Standard 10. By autumn 2025, 466 people from 153 organizations had registered. So at most three in ten of the roughly 500 certified organizations have signed up, since the figure also includes organizations without the seal.

That is real progress. But it doesn’t close the gap we are concerned with. The tool measures progress against goals and indicators that each organization sets for itself – in Zewo’s own example, whether children in therapy speak up more often. It does not show whether a franc achieves more at this organization than at another. Cost-effectiveness remains outside the audit mandate.

The conditions Zewo imposes also show where its audits focus. In 2025, 74 recertifications resulted in 237 conditions (in German), most often about correctly booking earmarked donations under Swiss GAAP FER, and increasingly about data protection. What gets enforced is mainly proper bookkeeping, not proven impact.

Why this matters for donors

As a result, Zewo cannot say anything about cost-effectiveness – whether the impact achieved is in a good relation to the costs, or whether a donation to another organization could help far more people. This is not a detail. Numerous studies from global development and health research show that the cost-effectiveness of interventions and organizations varies enormously. The best measures achieve many times the impact of others with comparable resources. And donors increasingly care about this: according to the Swissfundraising donation barometer (in German), a lack of trust and doubts about impact are being named more often as reasons not to donate.

An audit that is essentially limited to formal minimum standards is not enough to identify outstanding initiatives. The public profiles of certified organizations on the Zewo website show this too. Even for large organizations such as the Swiss Red Cross, with annual income well above CHF 100 million, the profile is largely limited to a self-description of fewer than 200 words (in German). It contains no statement on impact and no link to further information.

How it can be done differently

The evaluator GiveWell, whose research underpins, among other things, our recommendations for fighting poverty, shows that it can be done differently. In its analysis of the Malaria Consortium, some of the more than 100 footnotes alone are longer than Zewo’s entire organization profiles. Alongside numerous studies, it also links to the calculations that let you follow its conclusions on cost-effectiveness.

Beyond the depth of the analysis, the approach of GiveWell and our other research partners also differs fundamentally from Zewo’s. We don’t aim to certify that as many charities as possible meet minimum standards, and we have no financial incentive to do so. What we care about is finding the most effective charities in the world: organizations where you can be sure not only that your donation arrives, but that have also been rated as outstanding by international comparison.

That is why, instead of a list of hundreds of organizations, we present only a handful of truly outstanding initiatives. Whether you care about fighting extreme poverty, effective climate action, animal welfare, defending democracy or reducing existential risks: with us, you’ll find some of the most effective charities in the world.

Important: We receive no direct or indirect compensation from the organizations we recommend. Our work is funded entirely by voluntary donations from people who, like us, are convinced that well-considered donations can help many more people and animals in need.

You can find out more about our approach and our partners in our methodology. If you have further questions, you can book a free and independent donation advisory session at any time.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Zewo Foundation, Spendenstatistik 2025 (donation statistics, October 2026 edition, in German): donation volume and Zewo share in 2025, development by organization size
• Swissfundraising and Zewo Foundation, Spendenreport Schweiz 2025 (November 2025, in German): awareness of and attention to the seal (LINK Institute 2025), cost split per 100 francs, Zewo Impact Tool, donation barometer
• Zewo Foundation, Jahresbericht und Jahresrechnung 2025 (annual report and accounts 2025, in German): number of certified organizations, conditions, operating income, founding
• Zewo Foundation, Your donation in good hands: Zewo’s description of the seal
• Zewo Foundation, How to get the Zewo quality seal: fees and cost of first-time certification
• Zewo Foundation, The 21 Zewo standards
• Zewo Foundation, Zewo Impact Tool
• Center for Global Development, The Moral Imperative toward Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health
• GiveWell, Malaria Consortium