Non-profit charitable organizations are banding together to promote financial transparency among themselves.
Some 30 public welfare organizations, including the Garden of Hope, United Way, the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China and the Children Are Us Foundation, yesterday paved the way for the formation of a body known as the Self-Discipline Alliance of Taiwan's Public Welfare Groups.
"Every cent that a public welfare organization owns comes from the public; therefore, the money has to be used to benefit society. Finances is the area which needs the most improvement," said the Garden of Hope Foundation's chief executive officer Chi Hui-jung (
Chi said that the only way to ensure continuing donations from the public was to demonstrate that welfare organizations are managing the money donated to them in a trustworthy manner.
According to the Directorate-General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, 5.35 million Taiwanese donate an average of around NT$42 billion (US$1.32 billion) to charitable groups.
In a survey conducted by the United Way, 40 percent of donors wish to know how their money is used.
The non-profit groups yesterday called for the establishment of legislation to protect the rights of donors. They said that current laws may not safeguard all the rights of donors, and that these organizations feel that their survival and growth is being restricted by the lack of a complementary legal system.
The alliance will be formally established in September as a permanent civic entity to assist charity groups with their organizational and financial management.
The Ministry of the Interior's Department of Social Affairs said yesterday that it regularly posts details of various fundraising programs run by charity organizations on its Web site, such as a list of all approved organizations that may accept donations for the South Asia tsunami relief efforts.
The department has drawn up a clear set of procedures for organizations that wish to conduct fund-raising activities for non-profit purposes.
Following fundraising activities, charity organizations must file reports to the department listing the details of their income. The government may also conduct audits of these organizations to make sure the donations are used for the purposes stated during applications.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS