‘Anglican Board of Mission’: charity review

This is review^[1] in the series ‘Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) Members’. ACFID ‘is the peak body for Australian non government organisations (NGOs) involved in international development and humanitarian action.’ It requires Members to adhere to a Code of Conduct. ‘Anglican Board of Mission’ is one such Member.

COVID-19

Donors

The name in the ACFID membership list links to a website in the same name. Here they seek donations from the public.

The ACNC, in their article, Donating to Legitimate Charities, gives “some things to consider to help you make sure your donation is going where it is intended”:

1. Check the charity’s name.
2. Ask for identification from anyone seeking a donation.
3. Be careful of online requests for donations.
4. No tax deduction doesn’t mean the charity is not a legitimate one, and
5. Find out more about how the charity says it uses donations.

Here’s the results for ‘Anglican Board of Mission’, with #5 supplemented by the essentials of the ACNC’s What should I consider when deciding which charity to support?^[2]

1.  A search on the ACNC Register for ‘Anglican Board of Mission’ gives a register charity in the name Anglican Board of Mission – Australia Limited (ABM).

The governing document on the ACNC Register returns a ‘Blob not found’ error, so you will need to check later whether ABM has the necessary provisions in its constitution (or similar) to allow it to trade in the name Anglican Board of Mission – Australia. But it doesn’t have Anglican Board of Mission registered as a business name, so the ‘– Australia’ is required.

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2.  There is nothing to suggest that ABM raises funds door-to-door or in public places.

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3.  The web address begins with a closed padlock symbol, so the website is secure [the ACNC article above]. On the donation page there is a link to a ‘Security policy’, but it is broken. At the bottom of the page the small print says that ‘This webpage is secured by reCAPTCHA’, but this is just a service that ensures that the respondent is a human.

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4.  ABM’s ABN record (via the ACNC Register record) says that while ABM can’t offer a tax deduction as an organisation, it can via its fund, Anglican Trust Fund for Development.

In the giving process, the projects that are tax deductible are marked.

Some of the donation pages projects have the following explanation:

The ACNC Register shows that the ‘ABM Benevolent Fund’ is a registered charity that is controlled by ABM. However

The donation pages are the only place on the website that mention ‘ABM Benevolent Fund.’

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5.  The use of your donations

As context, read here what ABM does.

The audited account of how donations are used is the Financial Report 2019.

The Report has been received, but for some reason it is not available on the Register:

In early April both documents showed as having been received but neither were available. We asked the ACNC why this was so, but they said that they couldn’t tell me because I wasn’t an authorised or responsible person for ABM. So we wrote to Ivy Wang, the CFO and ACNC contact person for ABM. No answer.

There is a Summary Consolidated Financial Report (Australian Council for International Development [ACFID] Format in the Annual Report 2018-19 (not attached in the ACNC Register but available on ABM’s website). But as the auditor says, ‘Reading the summary consolidated financial statements…is not a substitute for reading the audited consolidated financial report’.

So, if you want to see where you donations went, ask ABM for a copy of the full report (and let me know if you need help interpreting it).

End of review

Charity response

ABM values feedback.

We sent a draft of this review to them on 1 May 2020. They did not respond.

1. See here for the previous review (in early 2017). ↑
2. A section in the article, Donating and Volunteering:
   • Focus on the nature of the charity’s work, its beneficiaries and the impact the charity is having in the community.
   • Is it clear what the charity is trying to achieve and how its activities work towards its objectives?
   • Would you like to spend your money, or time if volunteering, to support these objectives?
   • Is the charity being transparent about its activities?

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