Archived: Tahlee Ministries: 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Care: At least some of the information about this charity is no longer current.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 charity review[1] of Tahlee Ministries, a charity that seeks donations on the internet, and is a ‘Member Organisation’ of Missions Interlink[2].
The Australian charities regulator, the ACNC, in their Factsheet: Making sure your donation gets to where it needs to, gives “some steps to consider to help make sure your donation is going where it is intended.”
- Check the organisation’s name
- Ask for identification from anyone seeking a donation.
- Be careful of online requests for donations.
- No tax deduction doesn’t mean the charity is not a legitimate one.
- Find out more about how the charity says it uses donations.
Here are the answers for Tahlee Ministries:
1: There is no charity with exactly this name on the Register of charities. The ‘Contact Us’ page on the website (above) identifies it as Tahlee Ministries Inc[3]. But this doesn’t get us to a unique charity because there’s not one, but two charities registered that use this name:
Both charities are at the same address, so that doesn’t help identify the owner of the website. And the website doesn’t show the ABN. End of review?
It is confusing for one charity, Tahlee Bible College, to use the name of another charity. Perhaps it is a subsidiary of that other charity? The Register record of each charity suggests that this is indeed the case – all seven board members of the College are also on the board of Tahlee Ministries Incorporated. But there’s no group reporting, and Tahlee Bible College is not mentioned in the other charity’s accounts.
2. NA
3. Tahlee Ministries has a request for donations on the website but does not offer online giving. (If it did, it would need to secure its website.)
4. It doesn’t offer a tax deduction, but Tahlee Ministries Incorporated is nevertheless a legitimate charity. Tahlee Bible College offers a tax deduction but doesn’t appear to ask for donations anywhere. It too is a legitimate charity.
5. We could look at Tahlee Ministries Incorporated’s accounts to find out how the charity uses its donations, but there’s a problem. The auditor, Ashley Dorse of A J Dorse Accounting, while giving a ‘clean’ opinion on the financial statements, financial statements that are still materially deficient by the way, has again reported that the charity does not have any internal controls in place to ensure that all donations that are received make their way into the charity’s bank account. And the board[4] does not appear to be concerned about this. End of review[5].
- For the previous review, see here. ↑
- The ‘General Director’ of Tahlee Ministries, John Anderson, is also a director of Missions Interlink, an organisaton that has an accountability regime for its members. ↑
- This means that, because they don’t hold the business name that they use on the website, they are acting contrary to the business names legislation, and most likely their enabling legislation as well. ↑
- From the ACNC Register: John Anderson, William Brill, Stuart Fleming, Wayne Forward, Greg Gibbins, Fraser Hannam, Grant Morrison, and Lindsay Teasdale. ↑
- I sent them a draft of this review. Like the last two years, they did not respond. ↑