Status: 12/24/2021 10:11 a.m.
During the Christmas season, the willingness to donate is particularly high in Germany. The fact that more donations were made this year than usual is mainly due to the events of the summer.
The smell of cookies wafts through the rooms, the Christmas tree is decorated, candles light up the dark season – Christmas with all its traditions is the most important festival of the year for many in Germany. Giving and receiving presents are part of the customs of the Christmas festival. But many do not only give gifts within the family. At the “Festival of Love”, the commitment to those in need is higher than at any other time of the year.
This is also reflected in the amounts donated every year at Christmas time: “In December, around 20 percent of annual donations are collected,” reports Max Mälzer, Managing Director of the German Donation Council. The German Donation Council is the umbrella organization of around 70 non-profit organizations, which are involved in various areas from humanitarian aid to art and culture as well as monument protection. Since 2005, the market research institute GfK has been recording donations from private individuals on behalf of the Donation Council.
Record year for private donations
2021 should be a record year for many donation organizations. According to initial calculations by GfK, around six billion euros in donations from private households will come together.
The German Central Institute for Social Issues (DZI) even reckons with around 12.5 billion euros in donations, which is also due to other survey methods. In contrast to GfK, for example, the DZI also considers donations over 2500 euros. That alone caused a difference of around 3.3 billion euros last year. In addition, the DZI also includes in its calculation the donations from people who live in Germany but do not have German citizenship and it does not formulate the donation definition as narrowly as the German Donation Council. With these two points, the DZI recorded around 2.5 billion euros more in donations last year.
The flood disaster increased the willingness to donate
The main reason why Germans were so willing to donate this year was the flood disaster in the summer. Heavy rains had triggered catastrophic flooding on the rivers in mid-July, especially in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. Numerous communities were devastated, hundreds of people lost their lives.
As a result, according to the latest figures from the DZI, around 584 million euros were donated for flood relief: “This was the largest domestic donation campaign since the fall of the Wall,” reports Burkhard Wilke, managing director of the DZI.
Donate right
The German Central Institute (DZI) awards a donation seal that is intended to ensure the seriousness of an aid organization. Before the award is made, the economical use of funds and the annual accounts are checked for six months. However, the seal can only be applied for by supraregional organizations, which means that regional associations and foundations often do not bear it. And the seal costs money that does not end up in the projects. On request, however, the DZI provides free information on around 1,000 organizations without a seal.
The Consumer Center Hamburg also advises not to donate to organizations that use emotionally charged and pitiful images, but hardly provide data and facts. Instead, donors should ensure that an annual report is published. There the organization lists what it did to earn money in the past year and what it has spent it on again.
Donors can also find out more from the Transparent Civil Society Initiative. It obliges member organizations to make public the statutes, the names of the key decision-makers as well as information on the origin of funds, use of funds and personnel structure. So far, 1,564 organizations have joined the initiative. However, the initiative does not undertake to check the information for accuracy.
The figures from the German Donation Council, which are already available for the period July to September, confirm this: Compared to 2020, 73 percent more donations were collected in July. “The flood disaster caused great concern among the Germans: on the one hand, the effects were devastating and the images were really shocking. The effects were very present in the media.
The physical proximity is the reason why donations were significantly higher after the flood than after other disasters, such as the explosion in the port of Beirut last year. “The pictures from Beirut were also terrifying and caused great consternation. But in contrast to the Ahr Valley, Beirut is simply very far away,” said the expert from the German Donation Council.
This is confirmed by the figures from the umbrella organization: around two thirds of the total donations this year went to projects that are involved in Germany. In 2020, over 40 percent went to international organizations.
“Natural disasters are emergencies through no fault of our own”
Emergency and disaster relief in particular saw a significant increase in donations, as it grew by around 35 percent. This even exceeds the figure from 2015, when a particularly high volume of donations was observed due to the refugee crisis. “Natural disasters always trigger a very high willingness to donate, because those affected experience an emergency through no fault of their own. We were already able to observe this after the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004. At that time, the Germans donated over 700 million, it was the largest donation campaign to date,” reports Wilke .
Around 78 percent of the total donations recorded by the German Donation Council for the period from January to September went to humanitarian projects such as emergency and disaster relief. Animal and environmental protection as well as the preservation of culture and monuments increased again compared to last year.
Corona crisis ensures more solidarity
2020 was already a record year for donations. This is shown by both the figures from the German Donation Council and those of the DZI. This trend is now continuing despite – or perhaps because of – the ongoing Corona crisis. “The corona pandemic triggers strong solidarity effects among people, which increases the willingness to donate,” explains Wilke.
The Germans are aware that they are doing relatively well and that, especially in poorer countries, people have been hit much harder by the crisis: “In addition, Corona has increased awareness that people have to move closer together in crises Limited opportunities to spend money. ” This money will now be used to live the charity financially.