You found them somewhere ordinary. A friend shared a post, a search went sideways, somebody at church mentioned a name. The work looks real and the need is obviously real, and then the sensible part of your brain asks the question that stops most people giving anything at all.
How would I even know?
It is a fair question, and small organisations are usually poor at answering it. Not because they are hiding something, but because they are busy doing the work, and nobody on a small team wakes up thinking about a stranger’s due diligence.
So here is the checklist we would use ourselves. 6 things worth checking before money leaves your account, with our own answers under each one, because it would be strange to publish a test we had not sat.
1. Are they registered, and can you see the numbers without asking?
Registration is not proof of virtue. It is proof of paperwork, an address, and somebody legally accountable. What matters more is whether the numbers are printed where you can find them, or whether you have to write and request them like a favour.
Ours: Missions Ablaze is a registered Trust, IT 2049/2000. NPO 019-028. PBO 930020955. Section 18A approved. VAT 4310194297. They sit in the footer of every page on this site.
2. Can you reach a human?
This is the fastest test there is. Find the contact page. Is there a name, a real email address and a phone number, or is there a form that disappears into nothing? An organisation that is difficult to contact before you give will not become easier afterwards.
Ours: [email protected] reaches the office. 083 270 1913 reaches Tinus, who has been answering that phone for years.
3. Do they tell you what the money actually buys?
Be careful with the ones that give you a neat conversion. A certain amount equals a certain number of meals is an appealing sentence and often an invented one, because it quietly assumes every cost is the same everywhere and that nothing was donated.
Ours is deliberately not a conversion, because in our case it would be a lie. We do not buy the food. Checkers, Spar, Woolworths, Food Lover’s Market and Food Forward SA donate surplus that would otherwise be thrown away, and we collect it and move it. What money buys here is the moving. Electricity R40,000 a month. Diesel R18,000. Vehicle maintenance R7,500. Roughly R83,500 a month in total, about $4,175, to run the whole operation.
4. Do they tell you the unglamorous parts?
Every organisation has overheads and the good ones say so. The phrase to be suspicious of is any claim that all of your money goes straight to the cause, because somebody is always paying for the diesel, and if it is not you it is a grant, a reserve, or a person going unpaid.
Ours: the overheads are the operation. The food was already free. Getting it to a family is the part that costs, so that is the part we ask you to cover, and we would rather write it out in rands than round it into a slogan.
5. Can you go and look?
You will probably never take them up on it. Ask anyway. What you are testing is whether the door is open, and the answer tells you a great deal in the time it takes to read it.
Ours: 1 Hospital Hill Road, Tongaat, about 40km from Durban. Write to us and we will arrange it. People come and see the kitchens fairly often, and it is always a better day than the ones spent explaining them.
6. Do they tell you the bad news about giving to them?
This is the one almost nobody does, and it is the most revealing. Every organisation has an awkward fact. An organisation willing to put theirs in front of you before you give is telling you something about how they will behave afterwards.
Ours: if you pay tax in the United States, giving to us directly is not tax deductible. A South African Section 18A certificate carries no weight with the IRS, whatever anybody tells you. It is deductible only if it routes through a US 501(c)(3) intermediary, and we would rather set that up properly with you than let you find out in filing season. If you pay tax in South Africa, 18A applies in full and we will issue the certificate.
The honest summary
None of these 6 checks proves an organisation is good. They prove it is open, and open is the thing you can actually verify from a laptop on the other side of the world.
We have been doing this since 1995. 78.9 million meals distributed, 3.6 million lives touched, 31 years, from a property in Tongaat with a gate that opens every weekday.
Check us the way you would check anybody. We would think less of you if you did not.