Starter Kit. Idea 460 of 500. Cluster 24
Charity accounts checked and published by a volunteer auditor, with a mark for the charities that take part
The mechanism, from the book
The one thing. A country where people do not expect the rules to hold cannot build anything else, and proof can be manufactured by private people, one published record at a time.
The first step
Offer the trustees of one temple or charity a free review of last year's accounts, done by you if you are qualified or by a retired accountant who volunteers. Publish a one-page summary with their permission: money in, money out, and what it bought. The proof is trustees who agree, and donors who say the summary made them give again.
- Who pays first
- A temple or charity competing for donors, which pays a small fee because a published audit brings in givers abroad who want proof.
- What leaves today
- Donors give less, or give elsewhere, when they cannot see where money goes; published accounts are the proof that keeps giving at home.
Ask first
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask how charities in the division are registered, and whether their accounts are filed.
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask whether charities registered as companies file accounts that can be read.
Check before you spend
Confirm that the trustees agree in writing to the review and to publication, that the reviewer is qualified, and what the mark does and does not mean.
Find out these three numbers
- Would donors give more to a charity that publishes its accounts?
- How long does one fair review of a year's accounts take?
- How many retired accountants nearby would volunteer?
A comparison from the book
Sri Lanka House. Chapter Seventeen
"something in public that would be embarrassing to break"
A published mark works because losing it in public would hurt.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.