For good, you need to pay a commission – Newspaper Kommersant No. 214 (7415) dated 11/18/2022

The Need Help Foundation, one of Russia’s leading donation platforms for trusted charities, has announced that it will stop compensating payment system fees for money transfers as of November 15. The decision is explained by budget savings and the redistribution of funds for the fund’s statutory purposes. The organization spent about 800 thousand rubles to pay off the commission. per month and earlier repeatedly applied with a request to reduce tariffs. Against the background of a significant reduction in donations to charitable organizations, the management of Need Help hopes that in this way it will preserve the ability to “effectively support NGOs.”

Need Help cooperates with online payment services CloudPayments and YuKassa, thanks to which it is possible to pay with bank cards of various payment systems (MasterCard, Visa, Mir). Commissions for accepting cards are set by the payment systems themselves – an average of 2.7%. In the case of CloudPayments (most of the donations are accepted through this service), as Kommersant was told in the fund, 2% is withheld from each successful operation, but not less than 2.5 rubles. Sometimes transactions are rejected, in such cases the Need Help fund pays the service 50 kopecks. for each failed transfer.

“A person makes a donation, for example, to the AdVita fund – 100 rubles. Rs 100 was deducted from his account. The settlement account “Need Help” received 97.5 rubles, since 2.5 rubles. kept the payment service. “Need help” transferred 100 rubles to AdVita, taking on the costs of the payment service, – explained in the fund. – Now the fund will receive 97.5 rubles. The NPO itself will also pay for rejected transactions.”

Online donations are sent as part of the Internet acquiring procedure, which implies that each such operation has a certain cost, the CloudPayments press service explained to Kommersant. “Commission for Internet acquiring is set by the payment system and distributed among the settlement participants — the issuing bank, the acquiring bank and the payment system itself. Payment services cannot influence these commissions,” the press service added. “We would like to emphasize that verified charitable funds receive the lowest possible rates for Internet acquiring.”

“We and other funds have repeatedly applied for the opportunity to reduce commissions,” said Sofya Zhukova, director of the “Need Help” fund. “In some cases, we manage to get benefits.” However, a source on the market told Kommersant that it is impossible to completely refuse the commission: according to the rules of payment systems, the acquirer must transfer a commission to the card-issuing bank for each operation, and these rules apply to companies from any industry.

In order to support NGOs, since 2016, the fund has assumed obligations to repay the commission. As Kommersant was told in the organization, more than 35 million rubles have been spent on compensation for seven years. This year, the monthly expenditure for these purposes amounted to about 800,000 rubles, which is “a significant part of the budget and the salary of several employees” who work with NGOs and attract new donors. One fund, therefore, may receive less than 1 thousand rubles. per month, another – 22 thousand rubles. The termination of payment of the bank commission, according to the management of Need Help, will nevertheless allow continuing to effectively support Russian NGOs, “despite the difficult situation.”

“Kommersant” previously talked about the study “Need Help” and the Tiburon agency, which showed that fewer Russians can afford to participate in charity. In 2021, 44.3% of those surveyed were ready for financial donations, now it is 37%. The number of Russians who regularly participate in charity has decreased from 13.2% to 9.8% in just a year. In addition, due to sanctions, foreign companies that systematically supported Russian NGOs are leaving the Russian market.

So, “Need Help” clarified that since March 1, almost 4 million rubles have been donated to the work of the organization. less than in the same period last year (in 2021, according to the report, almost 20.3 million rubles were received for these purposes); and for funds and cases of the catalog of this service – by 23.5 million rubles. less than the same period last year.

Other foundations also reported problems. In particular, Rusfond said that in April-May they collected about 20 million rubles. less than a year ago. As a result, the number of children who received assistance decreased by 55 people. Nochlezhka, which helps homeless people, complained that due to the inability to make transfers from abroad, as well as the relegation of a number of social topics to the background, they are losing a “significant amount for work” – about 15 million rubles. The average check donated to the organization began to decline as early as February 2022: before that, it was about 700 rubles, and now it is 500 rubles.

Elena Martyanova, Director of the Vera Hospice Charitable Foundation, commenting on the Need Help decision, stressed that this is an important partner that has already attracted more than 35 million rubles. to support hospices in the regions, the operation of a hotline to help terminally ill people and help families with seriously ill children from all over Russia. “We are very sympathetic to the decision of our colleagues to stop compensation of commissions. Based on our own online fees, we know how expensive it is,” said Ms. Martyanova. According to her, the amount that the Need Help fund annually compensated for Vera is equivalent to the annual cost of gasoline for the field service of the Blacksmith Lobov’s House of Mercy in the Yaroslavl Region – the only one in three districts (100 thousand people). “This is more than two thousand visits of specialists of various profiles to the homes of seriously ill people with pain or other painful symptoms – to those who really need professional care,” Elena Martyanova specified.

However, Alexandra Babkina, head of another large donation service, Dobro Mail.ru, said that the fund would continue to compensate NCOs for payment system fees. “Since 2019, Dobra Mail.ru users who make donations using bank cards do not pay a bank commission for the payment. These expenses are covered by RNCO “Dengi.Mail.Ru”: each person simply transfers a comfortable amount, and the fund receives a donation in full. Thus, more than 90% of Dobra users send donations without a commission,” Ms. Babkina said. She emphasized that a small percentage of service users transfer donations through an online wallet or via SMS – in this case, Dobro Mail.ru warns people about possible fees.

Natalya Kostarnova