Trash Hero World is a registered non-profit association.
Our income for the year 2022 totalled US$ 326,299.
In 2021, our income totalled US$ 453,307.
Our support comes from three main areas:
Grants, donations and sponsors
Our main source of income comes from foundations and other grant-making bodies, who provide both restricted and unrestricted funds to Trash Hero World.
We also raise money from individual donors, who support our work both generally and for specific project ideas, such as the recent online crowdfunding for our kids’ book.
Corporate funders are welcome but carefully vetted: we will only accept contributions from socially responsible companies with no connection to the plastics industry. Ideally they should be taking concrete steps now to reduce waste across their business operations.
It is important to everyone at Trash Hero that we follow best practice and that our funding should come from sources that are consistent with our values, cause and mission. All our fundraising activity is informed by our ethical funding and ethical fundraising policies. (Also available in Deutsch, ไทย, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu)
Self-generated income
Trash Hero World receives income from a number of partnerships with companies that comply with our ethical funding policy and from various events and paid talks throughout the year.
In the past, we ran the Trash Hero @ Work programme in Switzerland that generated modest revenue to support global programmes. This programme is no longer running.
Donations in kind
At chapter level, we only allow donations in kind, to help us run our programmes. These come from local businesses in the form of cleaning supplies, transport, refreshment, sponsored prizes etc. for participants. Accountability to the community is the trademark of our work and no chapter seeks or receives cash donations.
We are also very lucky to receive donations of time and skills from volunteers around the world to help us coordinate and deliver programmes; as well as do design, translation, project management, legal, admin and accounting work. In 2022, our volunteer effort totalled 192,481 hours!
Currently donations in kind are not counted in our overall figures, due to the difficulty of assigning a standard financial value to contributions that come from different parts of the world.
We would like to thank all those who support Trash Hero and our mission for a clean ocean and environment, in particular our passionate and committed volunteers: the continuing donation of their time is what makes this organisation so strong.
Our financial sponsors are also greatly appreciated: they are the key to our growth and expansion.
You could also support us with a donation via our site, or with your time!
How do we spend the money?
In 2022, around 88% of our income – and 100% of donated funds – was spent on our programmes: providing training conferences for our volunteer community leaders twice a year and supplying materials for the education, cleanup and bottle refill programmes. We also funded the employment of five staff through our international network; and employed an office manager and an intern here in Switzerland.
All general organisational expenses in 2022, which include accounting, admin and fundraising, were covered by self-generated income (see above); a significant amount of this work is also currently done pro bono. We are able to keep our costs to a minimum because of this dedicated group of volunteers. However, we are seeking resources to pay additional key personnel and invest long-term in our programmes.
Read our Annual Reports
If you are interested in knowing more about our finances and our impact, we go into much more detail in our Annual Reports, available as PDF downloads below: