Archived: Whitley College: 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Care: At least some of the information about this charity is no longer current.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 of Whitley College (Whitley), an organisation that seeks donations online and is a member of Missions Interlink.
The ACNC, the charities regulator, 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 Whitley:
1: Checked. It is a registered charity, in the name Whitley College The Baptist College of Victoria. (An earlier attempt to review Whitley was thwarted by the temporary removal of this entire record by the ACNC. See the explanation here.)
2. NA
3. Whitley uses GiveNow to collect donations for it. GiveNow’s “web address begins with ‘https’ and “[that] there is a closed padlock symbol next to the website’s URL in the address bar”. A secure way to give to Whitley.
4. A tax deduction is possible.
5. There might be information about how it uses its donations, but this is in a set of financial statements that are drawn up on the belief by the directors, in effect, that there are no stakeholders of Whitley, either present or prospective, who are unable to command Whitley to prepare financial statements tailored to their needs. So they don’t comply with all the Accounting Standards. With 26 staff, and enough students, donors, grant makers, and others to produce $4.78 million of revenue, this is absurd. And if this is the kind of decision that these directors make…end of review[1].
- As usual, I sent a draft of this review to the charity. The Business Manager promised me a reply but, despite a reminder, there’s been no further response. ↑