Researchers at the University of Basel, in collaboration with the consulting firm PPCmetrics, have investigated the transparency of nonprofit organizations: Almost all Zewo-certified organizations are exemplary – unlike non-certified ones.

Complete financial information is available online around twice as often for NPOs with the Zewo seal of approval as for non-certified NPOs: over the last four years, 87% of Zewo-certified NPOs have published their entire annual financial statements online, compared with 47% of non-certified NPOs. Around 18% of non-certified NPOs lacked any financial information, compared to only around 3% of Zewo-certified NPOs. This is recorded in the "Yearbook of Aid Organizations," which is published annually by PPCmetrics and the Center for Philanthropy Studies (CEPS) at the University of Basel.

Organizations operating abroad have momentum but few reserves

The volume of donations in the "domestic social" sector fell back to 2015 levels in 2024 due to the decline in COVID-19-related donations. The "humanitarian abroad" sector, on the other hand, almost reached its 2022 peak with a volume of CHF 394 million. While the fields of activity "Domestic social welfare" and "Domestic health" show an above-average reserve ratio, the average for "Foreign humanitarian aid" is significantly lower. According to PPCmetrics, possible reasons for this are the young age of these organizations and lower fixed costs.

Swiss equities as a potential cluster risk

Although Swiss equities account for only around 2% of the global stock market, they make up around one-third of all equities in Swiss pension fund portfolios and are thus overweight by a factor of around 15 to 20. It can be assumed that many Swiss NPOs hold a similarly high proportion of Swiss equities. Because the Swiss stock market is more concentrated and has a different sector composition than the global stock market, there are significant differences in returns depending on the market situation. In general, it is considered advantageous to avoid overweighting individual sectors, countries, and companies when defining a strategy.

About the Yearbook of Aid Organizations

The Yearbook of Charities is published annually in December by the Center for Philanthropy Studies (CEPS) at the University of Basel and PPCmetrics. It contains all the key financial figures for charitable, fundraising NPOs and is based on the publicly available 2024 annual financial statements of 532 analyzed NPOs, most of which are Zewo-certified.