Where the money goes

The pledge, in its only wording

100% of net Purpose Fees go to the listed charities within 30 days of each payout, after published, capped costs: running costs at most 15% of a year’s net fees, and the reserve at most 5% of each payout until it holds six months of costs, so at least 80% every year. Listed supporters lower the costs, never what is passed on. No cap is ever raised for a purchase already made. Every cost and transfer is published monthly.

That is the single form the pledge is stated in — on this site, in the founding rules (in German, Finanzreglement § 12), and everywhere else. Its parts, always together: net (of the payment rail’s processing fee, which is published in the fee stack below and is not a cost of the Association); Purpose Fees (the pledge is about Purpose Fees and nothing else); within 30 days of each payout (each payout is passed on by its thirtieth day, Art. 6a); capped costs — two of them and no third: running costs at most 15% of the financial year’s net Purpose Fees, one cap on what is charged to fees, covering everything the activity costs to run — third-party invoices that exist solely for the movement and the pay of the people who do the work alike, never a bill that also serves another activity — and the reserve at most 5% of each payout (a retention of at most 5% of the Purpose Fees of each payout, only until the reserve holds its target of six months of costs, then nothing); at least 80% every year (the floor of the statutes, stated from the buyer’s side: one month can pass on less when an annual bill lands in it, a year cannot); listed supporters lower the costs, never what is passed on (a supporter may settle a running-cost invoice, or a personnel cost, in the fee account’s place, and is listed by name and amount — which lowers what is charged to fees and never what the listed recipients receive); no cap is ever raised for a purchase already made (a cap can be raised only with the consent of all members, after published notice, and only for later purchases, Art. 22); and published (every cost, every support line, every reserve movement, every transfer, monthly, to its evidence). The proof is publication, not a signature: no professional opinion is needed to read one bank account whose outgoing lines are of four published kinds and no other — transfers to the listed recipients, listed third-party invoices, personnel costs, and the reserve retention. The pledge is structural: the statutes forbid any distributable private profit, and they cannot be reopened to permit one.

The worst case, published as such. With every cap drawn in full — running costs 15%, reserve retention 5% — at least 80% of a financial year’s net Purpose Fee proceeds pass on to the listed recipients (100 − 15 − 5). Net Purpose Fee proceeds is the base the statutes use: the Purpose Fees in the payment provider’s settlement, after its fee, without the taxes charged at purchase, and after refunds and chargebacks — never the amount the buyer paid. Do not assume the reserve is already full: it starts at zero, and until it holds its target of six months of running costs (below), up to 5% of every payout can be retained into it. Sponsors, the Association’s other activities and other unrestricted money can fill it sooner. While it holds its target, nothing is retained; if it is drawn below the target, the retention can start again. The 80% is the floor of the promise: while the reserve is below its target, more than 80% passes on only when running costs charged to fees stay below their 15% cap or less than 5% is retained. The numbers are adopted in the statutes of 2026-10-01, and no cap is ever raised for a purchase already made.

What the law makes us pay, we pay. Taxes, court orders, and any refund or chargeback the payment provider can no longer set off against later fees are not ours to choose. We pay them from the Association’s own money, never by charging them to the fees as costs. If our own money ever falls short, or a court or an authority orders it, the law can reach money we hold, including fees not yet passed on, and no promise of ours can prevent that. If it happens, we publish it, as far as the law allows.

The fee stack, with the caps

Every deduction between what a payer pays and what a listed recipient receives, stated by us before anyone computes it for us. The component table below is the same one the fee schedule shows; every percentage in it is illustrative until the first real transaction settles, at which point the measured figure travels with the ledger row.

Deduction	Who takes it	Bound
Merchant-of-record fee	The payment provider acting as seller of record — card fees, invoicing, indirect tax	Contractual; published as a percentage (illustrative until measured)
Running costs charged to fees	Everything the activity costs to run — the movement’s own suppliers (hosting, domains, email, monitoring, payment-rail charges, the transfer charges of each outbound transfer) for the invoices no listed supporter settled, and the pay of anyone who does the work: employees, contractors and board members	Capped over the financial year at 15% of that year’s Purpose Fees net of the processor’s fee (Art. 6); never raised for a purchase already made; every invoice and support line published, people as one line per function and never by name (Art. 6f)
Reserve retention	The Association’s operations reserve, held in an account that is not the fee account	Capped at 5% of the Purpose Fees of each payout, and only until the reserve holds its published target, six months of running costs (half of the previous financial year’s direct costs, set each January); above target nothing is retained; never raised for a purchase already made; published as its own line, with the balance (Art. 6g)
Currency drag	Banks, on cross-border settlement — inbound with the rail’s payout, outbound with each transfer	Measured per transaction and reported with the ledger row; the outbound charge is a direct cost of the transfer-charges class, published per transfer

The single end-to-end flow-through figure — “of what a payer pays, this much reaches a listed recipient” — publishes on the day a real month has settled and been measured. Until then the components are published individually and the total is a range, because a total we cannot stand behind is worse than none.

Running costs — and the four things the fee account ever pays

Fee money pays exactly four things: the listed recipients; the movement’s own third-party invoices that no supporter settled; personnel costs, as one line per function; and the reserve retention, until the reserve’s target is reached. Nothing else, ever. The invoices and the personnel costs together are the running costs, and they sit under one annual cap. A direct cost is a third-party invoice for a service that exists only for the movement, billed to an account used only for the movement, or pay for work done for this activity alone. The eligible classes — the kind rule is in the statutes; the list is board-amendable with publication — are:

1. Domains and marks — registration and renewal of the movement’s own domains and marks.
2. Hosting and edge — DNS, hosting, CDN, edge compute and storage for the movement’s own properties, on the movement’s own accounts.
3. Transactional email for the movement’s own properties, on its own account.
4. Monitoring, error tracking and the status page for the movement’s own properties, on its own accounts.
5. Payment-rail charges not already netted from the payout (chargeback and payout fees), on the movement’s own rail account.
6. Transfer charges — the bank-transfer and currency-conversion charges of each outbound transfer to a listed recipient, over the regulated transfer services the board chooses and publishes, each only after it has accepted the model in writing; there, as at the bank, a recipient’s account is entered or changed only by two people and money goes only to a confirmed account. Published per transfer.
7. The yearly check of the fee account, the reserve account and the pass-on, under agreed-upon procedures by a licensed auditor independent of the board, from the year routed volume passes the review threshold in the statutes, or earlier if the board engages it.
8. Personnel — wage and employer contributions, or a contractor’s fee, for work done for this activity alone: maintenance, security, support, administration and the development the platform needs, keeping the recipient files, closing the month and publishing it. Only under a written contract at or below market rate; for a board member, only within the maximum per function the general assembly approves and with the prior minuted approval of the other board members, the person concerned taking no part in it (Art. 68 ZGB), published. Published as one line per function, never by name.
9. Legal advice, insurance and work tools — legal advice, insurance, devices, software licences and subscriptions that serve this activity alone.

Never eligible, by construction: the founding costs; tax advice; any bill that also serves another activity of the Association or the Association as a whole — bookkeeping and the accountant, payroll administration, the commercial-register entry and the Association’s own filings, an audit of the whole accounts by an auditor the members elect, the Association’s administration as an employer; and a person’s expenses. Those are costs of the Association’s other activities, and there is nothing to apportion — which is why no cost-allocation attestation exists or is needed. No board member is remunerated for board service as such; documented expenses are a cost of the other activities, and pay for actual work is a personnel cost inside the one cap.

Who pays the movement’s running costs

Who pays the movement’s running costs. The movement’s running costs — hosting, domains, email, monitoring, payment-rail charges, transfer charges, and any pay for the work — are paid first by listed supporters and otherwise from Purpose Fees, within the constitutional cap. Supporters are listed for each month they paid, by name and amount, and drop off when they stop. Nothing about the movement’s promise depends on who is on the list.

The list itself is data, published month by month on the transparency page with the rest of the table: fees received net of the rail’s fee, the running-cost invoices, any personnel cost by function with the source that bore it, cost support by supporter, what was charged to fees against the cap, each transfer to a listed recipient with its date and receipt, and the reserve retention with the reserve’s balance against its target. Support never passes through the fee account and never exceeds the month’s running costs; the full bill is published whoever paid it. A supporter or sponsor may also settle a personnel cost, as a listed line that never touches the fee account.

Paying people, and the operations reserve

Running the movement is work, and the work has to be paid for by somebody. The statutes answer that with one cap and a failsafe, in plain words:

• People sit inside the one cap. The Association may employ or engage people for this activity — members and board members included — and their cost is a class of direct cost inside the 15% cap of Art. 6, never a line of its own outside it. Employer contributions are part of it (Art. 6f).
• Every payment needs a contract and, for a board member, a maximum and the others’ approval. A written contract at or below the market rate for the work, under the compensation rule the board adopts and publishes; pay to a board member stays within a maximum per function that the general assembly approves, and within it the other board members approve the contract in advance, minuted, even if they are paid themselves. The person concerned takes no part in that decision (Art. 68 ZGB) and never releases a payment to themselves; if the board cannot approve, the general assembly does. Every approval is published. Pay already earned is never cut.
• Published by function, never by name. Personnel costs appear on the monthly table as one line per function, with the source that bore them — Purpose Fees, the reserve, a supporter, or another activity. Nobody is paid at founding; the founding minutes record it and the unpaid period is published.
• The operations reserve. It sits in an account that is not the fee account, and its published target is six months of the activity’s running costs: half of the previous financial year’s direct costs, people included, whoever paid them — Purpose Fees, a supporter, the reserve itself or other money. The board sets the target each January from the published monthly tables and publishes it; in the first financial year it uses the costs since founding, annualised (Art. 6g). So the target follows the costs, not the sales. Three sizes, illustrative only — no target has been set yet: on today’s running costs it would be about CHF 300; with one salary of CHF 54,000 a year plus CHF 6,000 of infrastructure, CHF 30,000; and if running costs ever took the full 15% cap, 7.5% of a year’s net fees. It is filled from Purpose Fees at at most 5% of the Purpose Fees of each payout until the target is reached, published as its own ledger line, reserve retention; the board may also add the other activities’ income, sponsors’ and other unrestricted money; above target nothing is retained. It may be spent only on running costs not charged to Purpose Fees because of the cap — personnel included — and on the transfer charges of the final sweep if the Association is ever wound up; it is never a refund reserve. Movements, balance and target publish monthly.

Plain-words version, with the question people actually ask: Can anyone be paid out of the Purpose Fees?

The Recipient List and the Recipient Standard

What is passed on goes directly from the fee account to the public-benefit organisations on the Recipient List: a published, versioned list that the board keeps, outside the statutes — usually about ten to fifteen named organisations, anywhere in the world, each assigned to one of the seven categories — paid in the shares the published allocation rule produces. Nothing stands between the fee account and a listed recipient: no pooled vehicle, no third party’s discretion, no handling fee. A category is the basket of listed recipients assigned to it, and nothing else.

Every listed organisation meets the Recipient Standard. Its floor is written into the statutes, and the board’s Recipient Rules may add to it but never fall below it: the organisation is constituted under the law of its country as a not-for-profit organisation with a charitable or public-benefit purpose in one of the seven categories, and a newly founded one is not excluded; it may lawfully receive a transfer from a Swiss association under the law that applies to it; it is not the target of sanctions that apply to the Association and is not seated in a jurisdiction the FATF calls for action on; it is not controlled by any member, board member, employee or contractor of the Association, or by a person close to one, and gives no such person a personal benefit; and it is paid only into a bank account in its own name that the Association has verified. The details of the checks are in the Recipient Rules, which the board publishes and may tighten or loosen with publication, never below that floor; they may ask for practical steps such as a receipt per transfer and a light yearly review. The Association keeps one file per recipient and does not publish it. The published list shows each organisation’s legal form and register number, country, category, share and status; beside it are its activation decision, a reference to the evidence for its legal form, for any permit it needs and for its acceptance of the recipient letter, the date of its last yearly review, and its receipts in the monthly table. Copies of that evidence are given on request, with personal data blacked out; bank details, personal data and sanctions records are never published. List changes are prospective only, after thirty days’ public notice; a removal for cause takes effect at once and is published with its ground. A recipient that asks to leave is removed the same way, at once, with the ground “at its own request”. There is no open self-registration: an organisation may propose itself, but every addition is a minuted board decision, and no recipient is ever added by free text or on a payer’s or a contributor’s nomination alone. The Standard in plain words, and the seven categories, are on causes.

Methodology

• Lock before sweep, one clock per payout. Every payout credited to the fee account has its own clock: its allocation is locked first, and then each listed recipient’s share is sent directly, in a transfer normally initiated on the 25th of the month the payout is credited, within the 30 days the statutes allow. Several payouts may be locked and swept together, as long as none of their deadlines is missed. Allocation data arriving after a lock — late payer designations, contributor votes — counts only for later locks, forward only, so a refund or a late vote never quietly reshapes a transfer already made.
• No roll-forward. Nothing is carried forward by us. Every payout the payment provider makes to the fee account is allocated and passed on within 30 days of its credit, however small, in one transfer per listed recipient with a share. The payment provider pays out once a month, and only when our balance with it is over its minimum payout threshold; a smaller balance waits with the provider, and a month without a payout has no transfer. Amounts that the law blocks are shown separately.
• Append-only ledger. Monthly exports are immutable once written. Corrections are new rows; annotations render as annotations, never as edits.
• Hash chain. Each monthly export links to the previous one, so a silently rewritten history is detectable by anyone who kept an old copy.
• One transfer per recipient, normally on the 25th. What is passed on leaves the fee account in one transfer per listed recipient, with its transfer charge published beside it and its receipt referenced from the ledger. The 30 days are never breached for the sake of batching: small transfers are the price of the rule. A correction after a transfer is a forward-only row; nothing is ever clawed back from a recipient.

The routing-tier report

Each month’s split across the seven categories is computed at that month’s lock. Once a quarter the ledger also carries a routing-tier report: how the quarter’s passed-on amounts split across the seven categories, and on what basis.

Before any category is chosen, each buyer’s passed-on share is attributed to registered repositories by the lane it bought: a Project’s wholly to its one repository; a Pass holder’s 1% to each repository it names — optional, at most fifty — and the rest equally across all registered repositories active at the lock. The attribution is advisory and the board decides finally (Statutes, Art. 8). From each repository, the tiers below decide the categories.

Tier	Basis at v0	Where it is decided
Project defaults	The categories the project’s administrators choose on the project dashboard, among the seven, or the share they leave to the Association (the “All” choice)	Claiming a repository
Contributor designation	Shadow mode: contributors’ choices among the seven categories are recorded and displayed, and route real money only after one reviewed quarter of shadow data and a fairness-qualified allocation algorithm	Contributors · Algorithms
The allocation key	Only for shares nobody has designated or that were expressly left to the Association (the “All” choice): the Association directs them each month to where they are most needed, only among the active listed recipients of the seven published categories, and only under the key the board publishes before the month it applies to; while no key is published, they go equally to all active listed recipients	Statutes, Art. 8

The seven categories: health, education, poverty relief, humanitarian aid, environment, animal welfare, research. Free-text recipients do not exist in the design; every recipient is a listed recipient — named on the published Recipient List, screened by the Association under the Recipient Standard, and named in the ledger at every transfer.

The ledger

The public allocation ledger lives at /transparency: the methodology above and one page per month regenerated from the immutable monthly export. Its first row appears with the first settled Entitlement purchase; the allocation rows follow at the lock, before any transfer; the first transfers — one per listed recipient — are normally initiated on the 25th of the month in which the payout carrying that purchase is credited, within 30 days of its credit.

What is true today

No money has moved. There is no ledger row, no transfer, and therefore no impact figure anywhere on this site. Entitlement sales open with the founding cohort; until the first settled purchase is recorded, the counters on the home page stay on mechanism copy, and every currency figure on this site, other than the prices of the published fee schedule, is labelled illustrative. The Recipient List is a draft: the board adopts the first list at its constituting meeting, and no recipient is named on this site before it is published. The operations reserve stands at zero and nobody is paid out of Purpose Fees; both facts publish as lines from the first monthly table.