Your Inquiries Answered
Frequently Asked Questions
How can 100% of the donations go directly to children in need? What about overhead?
My husband and I have committed to paying for all incidental operational costs as our main contribution. These costs include bank fees, PayPal fees, domain registration, and website fees. We will never take any money from donors for these things, and we want people to know that we care very much about ensuring that every cent they donate goes to where it's truly needed.
How do we know what the money is spent on?
Each fundraising initiative will contain a blog post with a list of donors and a tally to maintain transparency. The cost of running the Second Home Child Outreach Program that we sponsor in Kathmandu, Nepal, is $600 CAD per month. We release yearly transparency reports so that every penny is accounted for, and donors can see what we personally contribute to cover all operational costs as well.
How do you choose projects?
Aside from our regular sponsorship of the abandonment prevention program, we also put calls out to fund special projects where a need has been identified. Usually this is the result of our trusted overseas partners bringing the issue to our attention, such as a child who needs assistance paying his/her school fees, the need for a well, solar lights, emergency medical care, or disaster relief. Each need is assessed as it arises and then the emergency funding initiative will commence.
Do you work in countries besides Nepal?
We have provided assistance to children in Thailand and Cambodia, as well as Nepal. Currently our major focus is on abandonment prevention in Kathmandu, but as the organization grows, we will expand into more communities and take on more projects.
Why did you decide to start this foundation?
We have been helping children in the developing world since 2009 on a personal basis with donations from family and friends. As we started to take on more projects and support more children, we realized that we were operating more and more like a charity. To comply with government regulations and in order to sponsor more children and send money on a regular basis, we knew we had to become more professional. A very generous donor offered to assist us in paying for legal fees to create this foundation, and now we are free to collect and send money as frequently as needed!
Why aren't you registered?
Truthfully, time and money. In order to become registered, we must pay for independent yearly audits, and many more legal fees. Our status right now is non-profit charitable foundation, which functions wonderfully to allow us to send all of our donations to those in need, but unfortunately doesn't allow us to provide you with a tax write-off. Our experience has been that people donate because they want to help others more than they care about their taxes! If the foundation grows to a level where we are receiving large donations and tax deductions would impact our donors, we would move to register. Because we have committed to covering all of the operational costs ourselves and never passing those on to our donors, it would be a very large amount of money coming out of our own pockets. We wouldn't mind paying for that at all, if the need arises! Hopefully the foundation will grow to a point that it makes sense for us to proceed with the process :)