Russia: trend in donations since early 2022
Analysis published on what has happened to donations made since the beginning of 2022
21.10.2022
The fundraising performance of CSOs has been assessed by the Help is Needed charity and the Cloud Payments company.
Repeat and one-off donations decreased in the spring
Repeat donations declined across all CSO activity areas during March. Many withdrew money from their accounts, then opened Mir cards and transferred money to them. As donations are linked to cards rather than accounts, payments did not go through. There were also problems with payments from people who have moved abroad.
The average monthly rate of rejected transactions between February and September was 31%, almost twice as much as a year ago. On average, the amount of income from repeat donations decreased by 9% in March. At the same time, the volume of revenue, on average, fell by 14%. In some areas (medical and healthcare), it dropped by up to 18%.
By autumn, donations starting to return to January levels
Back in March, CSOs were sending out mailings urging people to re-link their cards, as well as launching new relief programmes linked to their current agenda, mainly helping refugees.
The payment market has stabilised and with it donations are starting to recover. At time of writing, CSOs have almost managed to get back to the level seen at the start of the year.
In addition, CSOs raised more in terms of money and donations for socially vulnerable groups (orphans, people with disabilities, the homeless, the elderly, refugees) in September than in January. An extraordinary increase in donations raised through major human rights CSOs saw numbers rising nearly four-fold in February (+286% compared to January) due to a ten-fold increase in the number of one-off donations.
Donations began to fall each month from April but after a nationwide appeal was launched, these increased both by amount (+50% compared to August, the biggest increase of all other areas) and in the number of payments made.
The analysis has been published on the To be Exact website (https://tochno.st/materials), a platform used by the Help is Needed charity.
