Online Service Empowers Grassroots Charity Donations by Muscovites

In 2020, the portal of the Mayor and the Government of Moscow launched an online charitable service that enables citizens to donate directly to Moscow NGOs via a unified virtual platform. Citizens can transfer money to charity organizations with no bank charges, at any convenient time and as many times as they wish.

Donors can be confident that their money will reach the intended destination as all nonprofits integrated with the service are long and trusted partners of the Moscow government and listed in the official register of Moscow charity organizations.

Before they are cleared to join the service, all NGOs are checked by experts from Moscow’s Committee for Public Relations and Youth Policy. The service’ partners comprise a large variety of NGOs that specify in different areas – those who support seriously ill children and adults, people with disabilities, disadvantaged families and animal shelters. The service now has 40 nonprofits as partners and their number keeps growing.

How does the service work? Mos.ru is a multipurposed online platform for Moscow citizens where, among other things, users can create their own accounts to make online payments of utility bills, car fines, etc. – all via the specified “My payments” section. Now that same section has an extra feature that allows all registered users to make donations to charitable causes with just a few clicks – there is no need to go to an NGO’s website or fill in any forms, all information about their activities is gathered on mos.ru. Moreover, every donor receives quarterly reports on the activities of the online charity service from mos.ru which detail the total amount of donations as well as their distribution among the nonprofits integrated with the portal.

“Moscow continues to enhance the functionality of its digital ecosystem and provide citizens with new opportunities via its unified urban Internet platform. The new service on the mos.ru portal allows citizens to make donations to charitable causes. With it, donating is fast and convenient,” said Eduard Lysenko, Minister of the Government of Moscow and Head of the Department of Information Technology.

The Government of Moscow is committed to providing continuous support for various charity causes. The online charitable service was developed by Moscow’s Department of Information Technology together with the city’s Public Relations Committee and Public Chamber.