Two Red Cross volunteers in red vests, holding collection boxes. They are next to an about two-metre tall collection box.

Donate to the Disaster Relief Fund

Photo: Palestiinan Punainen Puolikuu
Photo: Palestiinan Punainen Puolikuu

Donate to the Disaster Relief Fund

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Your donation means tangible help: Food, water, shelter. Both in the world and in Finland. In recent weeks, rapid emergency aid has been needed many times due to acute disasters.

PLS NOTE If you wish to target your aid to Ukraine specifically, select Ukraine crises as your donation target.

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Your donation helps the victims of natural disasters and conflicts all around the world. In Finland, aid is offered to victims of sudden accidents, such as fires.

You can donate also by:

  • Sending the text message SPR to the number 16499 (€15)
  • Using MobilePay to transfer the desired sum to the number 10900
  • Calling the number 0600 12220 (€20,52 + local/mobile network charge)

Account information

Account: FI52 5000 0120 4156 73, OKOYFIHH. Recipient: Finnish Red Cross. Reference number: 5186.

Emergency aid is needed urgently

By donating to the Disaster Relief Fund you help those who have encountered crises around the world. With your support, we provide humanitarian aid to the world's worst crisis areas: we train volunteers, distribute cash aid to families and provide field hospitals.

Anesthesiologist Anni Walli with her little patient. She works at the European Gaza Hospital as part of the surgical health team of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Photographer: International Committee of the Red Cross

Help would not be possible without the support of donors like you.

Your donation will also help here in Finland

Your donation will allow us to offer help in Finland: we search for missing persons, help those who have lost their homes in fires, provide psychological support to those who have been hit by a crisis, support the authorities and maintain preparedness.

Trained volunteers offer emotional support to children, young people and adults when needed. Photo: Heli Blåfield / Finnish Red Cross

In recent years, the local Red Cross branches have aided the victims of sudden accidents or crises more than three times a week with the help of the Disaster Relief Fund.

Would you like to start as a regular donor

Uncommitted funds of the Finnish Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund are channelled quickly to wherever the need for aid is the greatest.

Thanks to regular donations, aid supplies and aid workers are ready as soon as something happens in Finland or abroad.

Join us as a monthly donor

This is how the Disaster Relief Fund helps

Approximately 90% of the donations to the Disaster Relief Fund come from private donors. Your support is essential!

In addition to donors, the aid projects of the Finnish Red Cross are funded by e.g the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO). Since all projects require a funding share from the Disaster Relief Fund, aid work would not be possible without our donors.

Donate to the Disaster Relief Fund

We warmly thank you for your help!

The Disaster Relief Fund is not committed to any specific target, meaning that funds can be directed to crisis areas with short notice. When a hurricane wreaks havoc, a drought destroys all chances for normal life or life at a refugee camp becomes unbearable, donations save lives.

Emergency aid means taking care of the basic necessities: clean water, food, soap, blankets, tarpaulins and health care for people who have lost everything. We can also send a field hospital or equipment and support for building IT connections in a crisis area. We deliver aid in cooperation with the local Red Cross or Red Crescent society.

The Disaster Relief Fund also supports development cooperation. We help the community affected by a crisis get back on its feet, prepare for any new crises and deal with them as efficiently as possible.

The need for help can surprise any of us at any time. The Disaster Relief Fund also allows us to help people with emergencies in Finland. For example, people who have lost their homes in fires can receive emergency aid, such as emergency accommodation, clothes and hygiene supplies and psychosocial support.

Donations made for the Disaster Relief Fund ensure that trained volunteers are always ready to provide aid across Finland in sudden accidents and exceptional circumstances. During the coronavirus epidemic, volunteers have helped vulnerable people by distributing food aid and running errands for people in high-risk groups.

The fund also supports the Voluntary Rescue Service that helps the authorities e.g. in finding missing persons.

Here are some examples of what money can buy.

In Finland:

  • €50: training in psychosocial support for a volunteer
  • €180: clothes for a person who has lost their home in a fire

A preparedness unit on a trailer: When helping in emergencies, the volunteers bring a mobile preparedness unit with them. These units are located all around Finland, and donations to the Disaster Relief Fund are used to equip them:

  • €5: a blanket
  • €13: a metal petrol canister
  • €87: a carrier gurney for the injured
  • €149: a cordless drill

Around the world:

  • €9: a food package for a family for a week in a disaster area
  • €17: a maternity package in the middle of a disaster
  • €60: antibiotics for thirty children

Field hospitals can be sent to a disaster area anywhere in the world. The hospital supplies are acquired through donations:

  • €4.4: an iron supplement for after giving birth
  • €100: a suture kit
  • €620: an otoscope kit with one year’s worth of supplies
  • €4,100: a patient monitor with additional supplies for an operating room
  • €29,000: an operating table with additional equipment

The collection expenses of the Disaster Relief Fund must not exceed 20 per cent. This means that at least 80% of the donations are used for aid work.

The amount of collection expenses is monitored by the board and council of the Finnish Red Cross. Collection expenses are expenses caused from acquiring the donations, such as the printing and mailing costs of donation request letters, acquisition costs of the collection equipment, marketing costs, and fees collected by external service providers, including operators and banks.

The rules of the Disaster Relief Fund and its monitoring regulate the use of the donated funds.

In addition to life-saving aid supplies and their delivery costs, the Disaster Relief Fund can cover the salary costs of Finnish Red Cross aid workers operating in disaster and crisis areas. Such helpers include doctors, nurses and logisticians working in the areas. The Finnish Red Cross does not carry out international aid operations from Finland using volunteers. 

In the target countries, the share of aid workers and local volunteers depends on the situation and task at hand. For example, a field hospital clinic has a 50/50 share between hired employees and volunteers, whereas aid distribution can have one employee responsible for organising the work per 50 volunteers responsible for distribution. 

Of the permanent staff of the Finnish Red Cross, only employees working on fundraising are paid from the Disaster Relief Fund collection profits. The salaries of other staff in Finland are funded from several sources, such as the sales profits of Finnish Red Cross products, membership fees, and funding from various ministries and STEA.

In Finland, Red Cross employees support volunteers in their tasks. The aid work itself is carried out by volunteers, apart from a couple of exceptions. These include tasks in crisis situations that require trained psychologists.

Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers around the world take part voluntarily, out of a desire to help.

The rules of the Disaster Relief Fund and the strict control regulate the use of the donated funds. The accounting of the Finnish Red Cross is audited project-specifically every year, and an annual audit is required from other national associations of the Red Cross. Risk management is essential, because the international Red Cross movement operates in almost all countries in the world, and every country has its own operating culture.

We also analyse our cooperation partners, evaluate their capacity to monitor misconducts, and carry out monitoring ourselves. If the operations do not meet our expectations, we train our cooperation partner to develop their operations. If that does not help, we will withdraw our cooperation. This, also, is development cooperation by the Red Cross.

The Finnish Red Cross has permanent representatives at some aid targets, others we check once a year or more frequently as necessary.

If the target has an external funder, their representatives will visit the aid target to check that reports are accurate and money is spent as agreed.

We also strictly make sure that aid supplies go to those in the greatest need.