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Service Fellowship International (Global Interaction): 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Care: At least some of the information about this charity is no longer current.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^[1] in the series ‘Members of Missions Interlink’, Missions Interlink being ‘the Australian network for global mission’^[2]. ‘Service Fellowship International’ (SFI) is one such member:

The name is linked to a website. But the website is not in the name ‘Service Fellowship International’, but ‘Global Interaction’. Why?

Use of the search box on that website gives no results. A Google site search (site:globalinteraction.org.au “service fellowship international”) gives just one^[3]:

So Global Interaction is a recruitment agency for ‘Service Fellowship International’. But what do those who are recruited do once they get there?

Given what Missions Interlink does, Service Fellowship International is most likely a registered charity. A search on the ACNC Register gives two results:

An ASIC search shows no other ‘Service Fellowship International’ as an organisation or business name.

The second name, Service Fellowship International_ACNC_Group, reveals that there is another charity that is sufficiently related to Service Fellowship International^[4] for the ACNC to allow one AIS and one Financial Report covering both charities.

The second charity is called S F I [sic] Overseas Aid Fund.

The ‘Summary of Activities’ in the Register entry for Service Fellowship International Inc (SFI) says that this charity does ‘Aid and Development’. The ‘Description of charity’s activities and outcomes’ in the Group AIS 2018 is more helpful:

How does SFI fund these activities? The Group Financial Report 2018 says that it is almost entirely from donors:

There’s no Note explaining this $3.68 million of donations, but under the accounting policy note (the wrong place) is this:

Given that SFI doesn’t have a website, said in its AIS 2017 that it didn’t fundraise online, and in 2018 didn’t intend to fundraise in 2019 (AIS 2018), so how did these donors know about SFI?

Eight of the 10 Global Interaction directors are the directors of SFI, so it appears that Global Interaction controls SFI^[5]. Global Interaction produces (quite inappropriately) special purpose financial statements, which allows them to avoid consolidating entities they control (and reporting related parties).

Conclusion

SFI falls well short against secular standards of accountability and transparency. For a Christ-led charity this is particularly disappointing. But for an organisation that has the aim of being ‘seen by all concerned as those who value the integrity of their organisations’, and that is chaired by John Peberdy, the chair of the charity responsible for the CMA Standards Council, it is shameful.

Charity response

I sent a draft of this review to SFI. Like last time, they did not respond.