How to donate or exchange foreign currency?

How to donate or exchange foreign currency?

Do you still have some foreign currency left, after your business trip or holiday? Please don’t put it in your drawer and forget about it.

These coins and banknotes probably devaluate due to inflation, or even worse: they will get withdrawn from circulation and don’t have a face value anymore!

Of course, you can always try to exchange your foreign currency in your own preferred currency, but sometimes it can be pretty hard to do so.

Our friends at Travelex for example, don’t accept coins anymore, only banknotes. And Travelex only exchange banknotes from the most common currencies, such as Euro, British Pound, US Dollar and Japanese Yen.

If you have some Egyptian pounds for example; good luck! No single bank or travel exchange office will accept these kind of bank notes with low liquidity.

Therefore donating to Cambio Charity in the Netherlands might be your best solution!

Exchange your foreign currency

Like written here above, just a few major currencies can be exchanged, and only banknotes. What to do with kilograms of coins?

And even if you have 8 US Dollar and you want to exchange it into British Pounds or Euro, you will have to pay an admin fee and commission. Eventually you end up with maybe 3 or 4 GBP or EUR. Not really worth the effort, right?

Cambio Charity in Amsterdam consolidates all those small amounts and once a year they convert that money into ‘hard currency’.

Donating obsolete money and foreign currency

Did you know that you can still exchange old British Pounds into current British Pounds? And what about Dutch guilders for example?

Even until 2030 (!), banknotes can still get exchanged via the Dutch Central Bank.

Same for German Marks and Austrian Shillings for example. The German and Austrian Central Banks even still accept old coins!

The only thing is: you have to show up in person at the Central Bank in Frankfurt or Vienna. And for just a few Marks or Shilling, it’s not really the effort.

Cambio Charity in the Netherlands consolidates all these obsolete banknotes and coins and convert them into ‘hard currency’.

Three ways of monetizing foreign and obsolete currency

The Dutch Charity Cambio basically has three options to get your small amounts of foreign and/or obsolote currency into cash:

1. Consolidate all small amounts of foreign currency and exchange it into digital currency.
2. Exchange your obsolete money with the Central Bank of that specific country
3. Sell foreign currency to collectioners on marketplaces such as Ebay or Craigslist.

How your donation of foreign currency is used for charity

Cambio Charity uses your donation for three purposes:

Kiva.org

Kiva.org | This is an NGO which helps entrepreneurs in developing countries with micro-credit. In developing countries it is genereally pretty hard for a small business owner to get a loan or credit from a bank.

Only big corporations are interesting for banks, small business owners are a liability. Kiva.org helps small business owners with loans of just 500 USD.

This is for a farmer in Guatamala for example, enough to buy three cows. And with those three cows he can generate more income for his family, therefore; send his kids to school.

Eventually this loan is re-paid and the same money can be used to loan again to a small business owner. The average default rate with Kiva.org is about 10%, which means that every EUR/GBP/USD can be used 10 times!

Stichting Ambulancewens

Stichting Ambulancewens | This Dutch charity supports termanilly ill patient with medical transportation to their last wish.

This can be as simple as an hour to the beach or forrest for the last time. Or maybe go to a concert or sports game for the very last time.

Local Charity

Local charity | For currencies which are really impossible to monetize into hard currency, we work with very local and small charities around the world. Sometimes we just have 50 USD in the currency of that specific country. In those cases, people in our network (mainly people working in aviation), bring this donation personally to the local charity in that country.

Examples are donkey or elephant sanctuaries, potable water facilities, orphanages, primary schools, etc, etc.

In other words: with your donation to Cambio Charity, your foreign currency supports good causes!

How can you donate your foreign currency or obsolete money to Cambio Charity?

• Cambio Charity accepts ALL kinds of foreign currencies and/or obsolete money. (even coins)
• Even very old/obsolete money is accepted.
• You need to pay the shipping cost in advance. If you want the shipping fee to be returned, please add your bank account details on a note included with your e-mail address. Sometimes bank accounts are incorrect, so we need to verify.
• If you leave your e-mail address, you will always get a reply. But please be patient, we are a charity and working with volunteers. It might take three months to contact you.
• Simply send everything you got to Stichting Cambio. (Stichting = Charity in Dutch):

Stichting Cambio

WeWork Building

Office DD.22

Weteringschans 165

1017 XD Amsterdam

The Netherlands