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One Mission Society Australia Inc: charity review

Care:  At least some of the information about this charity is no longer current.  Use the ‘Search charity names’ box to see if there is a later review.  If the latest review has a message like this, you are welcome to make your case for an updated review via email to ted@businessbythebook.com.au.

This is a review in the series ‘Members of Missions Interlink’, Missions Interlink being ‘the Australian network for global mission[1]’.

‘One Mission Society Australia Inc‘ is one such Member, and an organisation that seeks donations online.

Both Members and Associates have to accept a set of standards, the introduction to which includes this statement:

http://tedsherwood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/word-image-20.png

This Member did not respond to a draft of this review.

The charities’ regulator, 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.
  5. Find out more about how the charity says it uses donations.

Here’s the results for ‘One Mission Society Australia Inc’[2], with #5 supplemented by the essentials of the ACNC’s What should I consider when deciding which charity to support?[3].

1.  A search on the ACNC Register of charities gives a charity with that name (OMS).

2. Does OMS use street collectors? There is no mention of them on the website.

3. The “web address begins with ‘https’ and there is a closed padlock symbol next to the web address in the address bar”, so the website is secure [the ACNC article above].

On the giving page there is no mention of the security of your information.

4. The Australian Business Register (linked from OMS’s ACNC Register record), says that the charity is not entitled to receive tax deductible gifts. But it is a ‘legitimate’ charity’.

5. The audited account of how donations are used is the Financial Report 2017 on the ACNC Register. Do you provide or give things to, receive things from, or have oversight of, or review, of OMS[4][vii]? Perhaps you intend to donate or are one of the people who gave $401K [Financial Report 2017]. If so, can you ring OMS’s office and request that they prepare financial statements that answer the question or questions you have about the charity? Highly unlikely. Yet the directors, with the agreement of the auditor[5], say you can:

So, the financial statements have not been drawn up to suit you. Why, then, would you rely on them?

Impact

The question of the impact of your donations is not addressed anywhere. (There is no Annual Report.)

 

Please contact me if you need a more in-depth review.

 

 

 

  1. https://missionsinterlink.org.au/about/http://tedsherwood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/word-image-21.png ↑
  2. See here for my last review. ↑
  3. 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? [A section in the article, Donating and Volunteering]. ↑
  4. [vii] From Objective of General Purpose Financial Reporting (SAC2), www.aasb.gov.au: http://tedsherwood.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/word-image-15.png   ↑
  5. Joel Hernandez of rdl.accountants. ↑

 

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BY: Ted Sherwood IN : , , ,
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