Foundation calls on wealthy pensioners to donate their 13th AVS payment

From next December, the thirteenth monthly old-age pension payment (AVS), approved by voters in March 2024, will be paid for the first time to around 2.6 million pensioners in Switzerland. A new foundation, Fondation Chance 13, is inviting well-off older people to forgo that money and donate it to those who need it more.

According to SRF, the foundation is aimed at people who can do without the extra payment. The donations collected will go to public-benefit organisations: among the first partners are Pro Senectute and Pro Juventute. Through Pro Juventute, the funds are meant to feed a simple, direct support scheme for elderly people in emergency situations, as well as projects for children and young people, for example in education.

Fondation Chance 13 was founded by Lucerne-based entrepreneur and pensions expert Jörg Odermatt and banker Karl Reichmuth, who each personally contributed 150,000 francs to launch it. The two expect donation income of between one and two million francs a year in the foundation's first years.

The founders believe that channelling donations through the foundation allows the money to be directed more precisely than a direct payment to public-benefit organisations. They stress, however, that many pensioners genuinely depend on the thirteenth AVS supplement: the call to donate is aimed only at those who can afford to do without the money.

How many pensioners will give up the extra payment?

The foundation, recently registered in the commercial register, does not yet know how many people will respond to the appeal. Odermatt estimates that one in four older people could forgo the supplementary payment.

The scheme raises a broader question: the thirteenth AVS payment is a universal insurance benefit, unrelated to the individual need of whoever receives it. Leaving it to a private foundation to redistribute part of that pension to the most vulnerable makes this kind of support dependent on donors' voluntary generosity, rather than on a mechanism guaranteed by the state.

A similar initiative has also emerged in Ticino with the Fondo Patto Generazionale, which has launched a fundraising campaign aimed at AVS beneficiaries. Its promoters, figures from civil society, are inviting people to donate part or all of their thirteenth monthly payment to support young people in need in the canton.