What the Donor Bill of Rights asks of a charity
What the Donor Bill of Rights says donors may know, from the board list to the latest financial statements, and how a non-profit can share them safely.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Non-profit businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A regular donor to a children's shelter e-mails the office with a simple request: who sits on your board, and could I see your latest accounts? The coordinator is not sure whether she is allowed to send them, the treasurer is travelling, and the e-mail sits unanswered for a fortnight. The donor draws her own conclusions.
Requests like this are becoming more common, and they are reasonable. The fundraising profession has, for years, set out what donors are entitled to expect from the organisations they support, in a short document called the Donor Bill of Rights. It was written in North America, but the expectations it describes travel well to South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. This article summarises what it says and how a non-profit can meet it without opening its books to every enquirer.
Who wrote it, and what it is
The Donor Bill of Rights was created by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, CASE and the Giving Institute. It is not law in any of the three countries. It is a statement of good practice from the fundraising profession, and many donors, foundations and corporate givers know it and judge organisations against it.
What donors should be told
Mission, purpose and capacity
The Donor Bill of Rights says donors have the right to be told the organisation's mission, how it intends to use donated resources, and its capacity to use them effectively. "Capacity" is the uncomfortable one. A small organisation raising money for a large building project should be able to explain how it will manage the project, not just why it is needed.
That gifts go where they were meant to
It says donors have the right to be assured their gifts will be used for the purposes for which they were given, and to receive appropriate acknowledgement and recognition. Restricted gifts must be tracked so that the organisation can show where they went, and a thank-you should follow every gift.
Who is asking
Donors also have the right, it says, to be told whether those asking for donations are volunteers, employees of the organisation or hired solicitors, and to receive prompt, truthful and forthright answers to their questions. The unanswered e-mail in the opening example falls short on "prompt".
The board and the accounts
The Donor Bill of Rights says donors have the right to know who serves on the organisation's governing board and to have access to its most recent financial statements. For many small non-profits, these are the two requests that cause hesitation. They should not.
The board list is simple to prepare and should be kept current: names, roles and, if the organisation wishes, a line on each member's background. Many organisations publish it on their website.
The most recent financial statements means the approved annual statements, not the day-to-day ledger. A donor asking for "the accounts" wants to see the statements the board approved for the last complete year, including any audit or review report on them. Interim figures can be offered as a courtesy, clearly labelled as unaudited.
Decide in advance who may send these, so that the coordinator in the example knows she can. A short procedure:
- Keep the approved statements and the board list ready in one place.
- Name who may send them, and on whose say-so.
- Answer every request within a set number of working days.
- Record who asked and what was sent.
Confidentiality and mailing lists
The Donor Bill of Rights says information about a donation must be handled with respect and confidentiality to the extent the law provides. It also says donors must be given the opportunity to have their names deleted from mailing lists the organisation intends to share.
In practice: do not publish donors' names or amounts without their consent, keep donor records where only those who need them can see them, and if you ever share a mailing list with a partner organisation, give donors a clear chance to opt out first. Privacy law in each of the three countries sets its own requirements on top of this.
Sharing statements without opening the books
Sending a PDF as an e-mail attachment means it can be forwarded indefinitely. A better approach in Achekam:
- Keep the documents together. Document Centre is a folder-based store where you can upload files or whole folders, then preview, download, rename, move, tag, archive and search them. Hold the approved annual statements, the audit or review report and the board list in a "Donor information" folder. When next year's statements are approved, upload them as a new version; the earlier versions are kept.
- Share by link, with an expiry. A document can be shared by e-mailing a personal link with an expiry date, an optional one-time code, and download allowed or not. If the link was sent to the wrong person, or the donor no longer needs it, the share can be revoked.
- Offer interim figures from the books. Management accounts show an income statement for a chosen period beside the period before, and a balance sheet at period end, both added up from the organisation's own journals and exportable as PDF. Note that the year-to-date preset starts on 1 January rather than your own year start, so set the dates to match your financial year before exporting.
None of this gives a donor access to your ledger, which is the right boundary. For showing board members figures without giving them system access, see board figures without system access. Funders who want to see how cash moved will find the answer in a cash flow statement for funders.
Read the full text
The Association of Fundraising Professionals publishes the Donor Bill of Rights in full. Read it with your board, prepare the donor information folder this month, and agree who answers donor questions and how quickly.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
