Please Exercise Philanthropic Prudence When You Donate
AnimalCare 
Jul 26, 2013 
AnimalCare, NGOs 
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It is rather coincidental that we received these two pieces of news yesterday and this morning and we would like to share it with all of you as it is a good reminder to all of us that as donors (or in our case, as a society that gives out subsidies), we must exercise philanthropic prudence, ie. to be careful and wise in giving out donations, to ensure that our hard-earned donations are properly and ethically used. As a donor, your money is also hard-earned and given in trust, so you might also want to exercise philanthropic prudence.
These two cases involve people whom we used to help, but are no longer helping anymore now. I will use the pronoun “she” in both cases although I must stress that it is only used for convenience and not indicative of the gender of the people involved.
Case One
Whenever any applicant applies for our funds, our form has to be filled up and we always ask if she is also applying to other sources for funds.
This is written in our policy:
If you are going to or have already applied to other sources* for funds, kindly disclose this fact in your communication with us and on the form. In such cases, the subsidy amount may be revised accordingly or we may not subsidise at all. Failure to disclose this fact amounts to dishonesty and you may be barred from receiving help from us.
*Other sources of funds: PetFinder, SCRATCH, KLPooch, MDDB, Facebook, other social media, friends, family, etc.
And this is on our form:
Are you also applying to other organizations for subsidy or raising funds from other sources for this case? ___________________ (Yes/No)
If yes, please state the name of the organizations and the other sources (includes Facebook): _________________________________________________________
We found out yesterday that one of our former applicants had actually been receiving help from other sources (generous friends) but had never revealed it to us.
It was coincidental that we met one of these donors (by accident, you see how “the sky has eyes”) and this information came out in the open.
Well, our conscience is clear. We did not cheat. She did. We already take all possible measures to reduce the incidence of cheating, but if people still want to cheat, we can only leave it to the Universe to take care of that.
Case Two
This is a case of going to the social media to raise funds for a needy animal. Malaysians are generally very generous, so they give generously. But greed got the better of the rescuer and the amount raised was not reported to the donors, so the amount has now far exceeded what was required. We used to help this applicant too, but are no longer helping her now. A reader reported it to us this morning as she is concerned that donors are being duped into giving endlessly for this case. There is nothing we can do about this, actually, except to write this post and alert everyone to be prudent when giving donations. Always check, investigate and ask for accountability. It is your right.
Since we are on this subject, we would like to clarify why we insist on being informed if the applicant is also applying for funds through other sources – we want to avoid over-claiming. If the applicant is applying to PetFinder.my, that is easy for us as we work closely with PetFinder.my and we discuss on an agreeable joint percentage. But if the applicant is raising funds through Facebook, we can only rely on the applicant’s integrity to tell us the truth, ie. to reveal the exact amount raised.
In our experience, when it concerns Facebook fundraising, we will always give the applicant two options:
1. We will give 50% and if you can come up with the 50% yourself, there is no need to go to Facebook anymore. Fundraisers must also find out if raising funds through Facebook is legal. Again, is your Facebook a closed group or open? Best to check with a lawyer on the legality of that. You wouldn’t want to break the law.
2. If you prefer to raise your own funds (through Facebook or family and friends), then please go right ahead and if you are still short after that, you may come to us. However, you must give us a detailed account of how much you have raised through your own means (again, we can only hope you will be honest in this). But here’s what happens 100% of the time, the applicant will come back after 1-2 days saying she has already raised 100% of the needed funds through Facebook itself! See how generous Malaysian are! That’s even better than our 50%, isn’t it?
That is why we have it in our policies: If you can raise your own funds, please do so. You don’t need us!
Then there is the question of why we can only give up to a maximum of 50%. Well, these are the reasons:
a. We want to drive home the point that if you want to do rescue work, you must be able to financially sustain your work yourself (at least partially) and not totally rely on charity or on others to support you. Be self-reliant, please, and we are more than happy to help you with 50%.
b. We help so many cases per month. We cannot afford to give 100%!! In our first two years, we did, but the number of applicants kept increasing, so we had to change our policy to providing only 50%.
And last but not least, we have also been told that a certain rescuer has been instigating our applicants to cheat us of our funds. This rescuer has found a few loopholes in our procedure and devised ways for applicants to get our funds when they do not qualify.
Sigh…greed gets to people quite easily if they are not brought up on a strong moral foundation. That is why the world is what it is today and eventually our own defilements will destroy us, the human race.
To those who are greedy and dishonest, the Universe will catch up with you eventually. There is no way you can run from that!
Source: http://myanimalcare.org/2013/07/26/please-exercise-philanthropic-prudence-when-you-donate/
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