Website for a Swiss association: collecting donations and recruiting volunteers

What should an association's website show first?

Visitors arrive with a practical question: when does it happen, and how do I take part? Put the answer at the top of the home page: training times for a sports club, this week's meeting point for a food distribution. Add two clearly visible actions, “Donate” and “Volunteer”, at the top of the home page and at the bottom of every page, and say what the money pays for and whether people can come just once.

Amana Maraude, a Geneva collective that has been preparing and handing out hot meals to homeless people every Saturday evening for more than 10 years (I built its website with Safwan Abdirahman), follows this pattern. The home page shows a typical Saturday (preparation at 14:00, departure at 16:30, distribution at 17:00, return at 18:30) and the figures the collective publishes: 50 people fed each week, 600 volunteers who have taken part over the years. The donation page offers card or TWINT, or a bank transfer to the partner association Dounia Charity, which collects the donations; volunteers find a sign-up form and a link to the WhatsApp group where outings are organised. Partner associations are listed, and a private area is set aside for coordinators.

Association or informal collective: who is responsible, and what should the site display?

An association with a non-commercial purpose acquires legal personality as soon as its written articles of association show the intention to exist as a corporate body (Art. 60 CC). Unless the articles provide otherwise, its seat is where it is administered (Art. 56 CC). The committee manages and represents the association (Art. 69 CC), and the association is liable for its obligations with its own assets, unless the articles provide otherwise (Art. 75a CC). An informal collective without articles is treated as a simple partnership (Art. 62 CC), whose partners are jointly and severally liable for obligations entered into with third parties (Art. 544 para. 3 CO). To receive money, a collective can therefore set up an association or go through a partner association.

On the site, show the association's exact name, the municipality of its seat, a contact email address and the role of the people in charge. As soon as a form collects data, the nFADP requires you, among other things, to state the controller's identity and contact details (Art. 19 para. 2 FADP): according to the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), that is generally the association itself.

How do you collect donations: online payment and QR-bill?

Offer an instant online payment and a bank transfer on the same page. TWINT lets clubs and non-profits register with TWINT Acquiring AG or its partner RaiseNow to get a payment link or a button for the website, plus a QR code to print on a flyer. The listed conditions start “from 1.3%”, and RaiseNow adds donation-specific features such as a donation receipt option.

For card payments, use a payment provider that hosts the payment page itself, so card numbers never pass through your site, and compare its fees and payout times.

For bank transfers, the SIX QR-bill definitively replaced Swiss payment slips on 1 October 2022. For a donation appeal published on your site, the amount and the payer's address can be left blank for donors to fill in when they pay. A QR-IBAN is only needed with QR references; otherwise the account's regular IBAN is enough. SIX keeps updating its guidelines (new requirements in November 2025, a new version announced for November 2026), so generate the QR-bill with your bank's tool or a generator listed by SIX. Next to the code, write out the IBAN and the account holder's exact name.

Are donations to an association tax-deductible?

Only if the organisation receiving the money is tax-exempt. For federal direct tax, Art. 33a of the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation (DFTA, known as LIFD in French and DBG in German) allows a deduction for donations to legal entities with their seat in Switzerland that are tax-exempt because of their public-service or public-benefit purposes (Art. 56 let. g DFTA). Donations must reach at least CHF 100 per tax year, and the deduction is capped at 20% of income after the deductions under Art. 26 to 33. For a company that donates, the cap is 20% of net profit (Art. 59 para. 1 let. c DFTA).

For cantonal tax, each canton sets its own rules. According to the Federal Tax Administration's table for the 2025 tax period, Geneva and Vaud also cap the deduction at 20% of net income, with a minimum of CHF 100 a year in Vaud; the cap is 5% in Neuchâtel and 10% in Jura.

In Geneva, an organisation applies for exemption to the cantonal tax administration, for cantonal and municipal tax as well as federal direct tax. Among the conditions published on ge.ch: no profit-making purpose, and funds allocated irrevocably to public-benefit or public-service purposes. An exempt organisation must issue a donation certificate for gifts of CHF 300 or more, which donors taxed in Geneva attach to their tax return.

An informal collective without articles of association is not a legal entity, so donations it receives directly do not meet the condition in Art. 33a DFTA. If a partner association collects the donations, as in the Geneva example above, what counts is that association's tax status. On the donation page, only write “your donation is tax-deductible” if the entity receiving the money holds an exemption decision, name that entity, and say who sends the certificates.

Volunteer sign-up form: what data should you ask for?

On its page about associations, the FDPIC points out that the committee may only ask members for personal data directly related to the purpose set out in the articles of association, and only the data that is needed may be processed (Art. 6 para. 2 FADP). The general website rules (privacy policy, cookies, hosting) are covered in my article on the nFADP.

• Ask for a name, a way to get in touch, availability and, only if the team actually uses it, languages spoken.
• Avoid questions about religion or health, allergies included: these are sensitive personal data (Art. 5 let. c FADP), and the FDPIC notes that processing them requires express consent. If a health detail is truly needed (for a sports camp, say), collect it separately.
• Only ask for a date of birth if age matters, for example when minors need supervision.
• Below the submit button, say who receives the request, what it is for, who the data is passed to and how to ask for deletion.
• If the team organises itself in a WhatsApp group, say so before people sign up, and keep the form for those who would rather not join the group.

Volunteers and donors: what can you publish, and how long should you keep data?

When you email all your volunteers, use bcc, as the FDPIC recommends. Handing the member list to other members in principle requires each member's prior consent, and the FDPIC suggests keeping member data to a restricted group of people, in a protected area of the website.

A donor wall is a nice gesture, but the people named must agree. The FDPIC already requires consent to pass a donor's name to the family of a deceased person: donors must be told at the time of the donation and be able to agree or refuse in a simple way. A separate, unticked box on the donation form does the job.

The nFADP requires you to destroy or anonymise data once it is no longer needed (Art. 6 para. 4 FADP), unless a legal retention duty applies. Accounting records, including proof of donations, must be kept for 10 years from the end of the financial year (Art. 958f CO), as the FDPIC also points out. That duty is no reason to keep a donor on a mailing list.

Photos of volunteers and of the people you help: what does the right to one's image say?

According to the FDPIC, everyone has the right to their own image and, as a general rule, decides whether it may be taken and published. The Civil Code protects personality rights: an infringement is unlawful unless it is justified, in particular by the consent of the person concerned (Art. 28 CC). As soon as someone is recognisable, the photo is also personal data, group photos included, although the infringement is less serious when no one stands out from the group.

• Members and volunteers: the FDPIC says consent is required before publishing members' photos on an association's website, for example through a separate box on the sign-up form. Consent can be revoked at any time, and the association must then remove the photos immediately, unless there is another justification.
• Portraits: the person must be able to see the photo before it is published and be told the context in which it will appear.
• Minors: the FDPIC says parents or guardians must also consent before a photo of a minor is published.
• People you help: the FDPIC mentions photos published in a sensitive context as harder for the person to accept, and the FADP lists data relating to social assistance measures as sensitive personal data (Art. 5 let. c no. 6). Photograph the work and the team rather than the faces of the people you serve.

Accessibility: a website the whole public can use

An association's website is for everyone, including older people and people with low vision. For its own websites, the federal administration refers to the eCH-0059 standard, whose third version requires the WCAG 2.1 criteria at level AA: a good benchmark for an association.

• A contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between body text and background (WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3), and text that stays readable when enlarged to 200%.
• Alt text for images that carry information, such as an event poster.
• Forms with visible labels that work entirely with a keyboard.
• Times and places written out on the page: a poster published as an image is not enough, because a screen reader cannot read the text in an image.

Checklist for your association's website

• At the top of the home page: when you are active, and two buttons, “Donate” and “Volunteer”.
• The association's exact name, the municipality of its seat, a contact email and the role of the people in charge.
• At least two ways to give: TWINT or card through a provider, and an up-to-date QR-bill.
• An accurate sentence on tax deductibility: which entity is exempt, and who sends certificates (mandatory in Geneva from CHF 300).
• A volunteer form cut down to what you need, with no questions about religion or health, and a short privacy notice.
• A separate, unticked box for publishing a donor's name or a volunteer's photo.
• Written deletion deadlines for applications that went nowhere, and accounting records kept for 10 years.
• Photos published with consent, without the faces of the people you help, on a site with good contrast that works with a keyboard.

Need a website for your association or collective?

At Kollowo, I build fast, bilingual websites for associations and volunteer collectives in French-speaking Switzerland, with donation and sign-up pages planned from the start. If you'd like me to look at your current site, just write to me.