A letter from YAH founder @SirCork: YouAreHOPE Foundation's charitable practices and the "business" of "charity". Accountable & Transparent. Ethical & Principled.

Hi Folks,

@SirCork here, top 100 steem witness and the founder of the YouAreHOPE Foundation.

I have a confession to make.

I am no expert at running a charitable organization. It's true. I have no idea what I am doing!

Despite having spent many hours of my life around, involved in and volunteering for various charities and not-for-profit organizations over the decades of my life beginning in childhood and continuing into my adult life, and several years of my career spent providing technical consulting and services to various kinds of non-profit organizations, I kind of came into this project with no real clue how to proceed from a "business" point of view.

I just knew I wanted to devote my life now, as much as my career permits, and my life after my career as a retiree, to service work for the people of the world we share. I want to do something to help those who need it the very most in the most economically distressed parts of the world.

It turns out, the hard part is not the fundraising or the delivery of food, water, shoes, clothes, school supplies, hygienic supplies, or other things people need to fundamentally survive and be healthy.

The hard part is getting organizational processes and policies in place. It is turning out to be a bit scary to commit to creating and handling the promotional and awareness campaigns and making sure the whole foundation of the Foundation is solid, secured, and remains ethical, principled and on mission without distraction as we march bravely into the future, to accomplish the unknown, in places we don't always speak the local language.

It's a lot to consider and we must do so with a level of transparency and accountability that we can take pride in and which you, the donors and supporters, can trust and depend on for us to be good stewards of your generous gifts as we accomplish each goal we set for a community of people in need across the globe.

It's a lot to take on, and it comes with a great deal of responsibility.

At times, I find it pretty daunting to think I am even trying to do this.

As it happens, like any good block chain nerd, I knew I could turn to the web for some insight and assistance in making sure we keep on "doing things right" and I was not disappointed when I started doing research on how to form, operate and maintain this organization.

We are just getting started here and I absolutely want to be sure we adhere to a principled, transparent, accountable and ethical set of guidelines within which we will build the basis and continue to operate in perpetuity into the future!

The first place I landed was the well known American charity "watchdog" site called CharityNavigator.com which gives a ton of information about hundreds of charities and I have gleaned a ton of information from their pages. I will be using a lot of what I've learned there to set up the solid basis for YouAreHOPE to operate on.

Accountability & Transparency

CharityNavigator.com provides this overview for us to follow.

We define accountability and transparency in assessing charities as follows:

Accountability is an obligation or willingness by a charity to explain its actions to its stakeholders.

Transparency is an obligation or willingness by a charity to publish and make available critical data about the organization.

We believe that charities that are accountable and transparent are more likely to act with integrity and learn from their mistakes because they want donors to know that they're trustworthy. Generally speaking, charities that follow best practices in governance, donor relations and related areas are less likely to engage in unethical or irresponsible activities. Therefore, the risk that charities would misuse donations should be lower than for charities that don't adopt such practices. When examining accountability and transparency, Charity Navigator seeks to answer two basic questions:

Does the charity follow good governance and ethical best practices?

Does the charity make it easy for donors to find critical information about the organization?

So part one and two of our mission are to ensure we do these things and do them well and consistently here at YouAreHOPE.

This letter is the first of many to come which will discuss, define and outline our intentions for solid governance and ethical best practices.

The primary reason I chose to home this organization on the STEEM block chain is because of the built in nature of transparent financial accounting via the block chain activity and our wallet logs, and the border-less, unique value of what STEEM offers us in terms of international, instant transfers and accessibility to people located anywhere, and because of the amazingly generous nature of the people here who can help us make all this happen, via direct volunteer work, donations, delegations and shared enthusiasm and encouragement throughout our community here.

So yes, we are transparent, by the nature of the chain we are accountable, and there is ample opportunity for anyone to review our transactions, efforts, results and to directly reach out to and discuss anything related to the project with me, the founder or any of our representative volunteers or "staff" as one might choose to refer to them here in this context.

Critical information about the organization can be found here in our blog posts, in our website at YouAreHOPE.org and by direct contact via any number of methods, including our YAH discord chat server, steemit.chat, comments on posts or in person at meetups and other events as they come along when we can feasibly attend them.

As noted, critical financial information about the YouAreHOPE Foundation is easily reviewed in many ways that allow you to see all our transactions on the block chain, be that via our steemit wallet, or any of the other services like steemdb or steemd or the others, which allow you to peruse and review all of our financial activities.

A UK based insurance company I stumbled into while doing this research into best practices had this image on it, which ideally sums up how I feel we are called to perform as we steward your gifts into action across the world to change lives for the better around the world however we best can do so at any given time.

Source: https://caseinsurance.co.uk/blog/charity-trustee-whats-involved/

Another important lesson I learned during the formation of this project was given to me by @Malos10. This whole idea came about because of things that @malos10 inspired for me, and together, we were able to do some amazing things in Venezuela in an experimental project we ran in September together.

During that small exercise we worked together on this idea to raise funds and bring some food to the poverty stricken folks affected by the horrible economic conditions happening in his country right NOW. Proudly we were able to feed about 25 people one day who had no food of their own and we documented that and those posts are in our blog archives now.

While we did this and as @Malos10 and I, who met here on the steemit platform, got to know each other a little. He, an amazingly motivated young man in South America and me, a nearly retired old dude in North America really enjoyed the cultural exchange of our different situations and backgrounds.

I quickly learned that he was into Parkour - the extreme sport of high athletic "city running" which is actually more about reaching, jumping, climbing and overcoming obstacles, than just running alone. Parkour has a sort of philosophical tone to it similar to those found in martial arts.

During this discussion @Malos10 taught me a principle tenet of Parkour which is "Be Strong To Be Useful" and we have often discussed what that means to us and remind each other of the phrase constantly now when one of us is feeling "weak" or discouraged about something in our lives.

But what is the point of that story?

Well, it leads to the next questions I had about taking on a full time role operating a worldwide charity.

Is it okay to draw an income from this effort, so I can devote ALL my time to it?

What do I do about operating costs, like the web server, or international phone calls, or outsourcing tasks that the business side of the Foundation needs to operate effectively, or other things that construe the expenses and fundamental things needed to actually make this happen? Can I spend donations on these things, is that okay?

With all that in mind, and realizing that the YouAreHOPE Foundation and it's leadership and core team need to "Be Strong To Be Useful", I went back to the web to find out how the world's most established charities address these things and what the acceptable standards are for things like expenses, operating costs and salaries for the organization's key members. I wondered what the percentage of donated funds was acceptable for use in operations and salaries and other key expenses that comprise the cost of doing good in the world today.

I wanted to know if salaries were ok, how much was acceptable to use of donated funds to accomplish our goals as opposed to the costs of the charitable offerings themselves in the form of purchased food products we need to procure to distribute, and so on.

When deciding which charities to donate to, many people consider an important factor to be the “efficiency” of these organizations — that is, what percentage of the monies taken in by a given charity goes to funding its mission rather than being eaten up by costs such as fundraising activities, salaries, and other administrative overhead.

Once again, CharityNavigator.com and a couple other references I will include herein, had exactly what I was looking for and this is what I learned:

There are two metrics that produce the "grade" for a charity and you need to keep your charity at above a "C" grade level to pass this watchdogs criteria for acceptable operating costs.

Program % reflects the percent of total expenses a charity spent on its programs in the year analyzed.

For example, a Program % of 80% means that the charity spent 80% of its expenses on charitable programs. The remaining 20% was spent on overhead, which includes fundraising costs, and management & general expenses.

"Cost to Raise $100" reflects how much it costs the charity to bring in each $100 worth of cash donations from the public in the year analyzed.

For example, a Cost to Raise $100 of $20 means that the charity spent $20 on fundraising for each $100 of cash donations it received.

CharityWatch considers a charity to be highly efficient when our end calculations produce a Program Percentage of 75% or higher, and a Cost to Raise $100 of $25 or less.

All this detail and simple but detailed examples can be seen here:
https://www.charitywatch.org/charitywatch-criteria-methodology

To summarize that quote, they suggest that a typical charity is "efficient" if it can operate on one quarter of it's donated income revenue. They provide a ton of detail about how all this is measured and determined and discuss some erroneous mistakes charities sometimes make which they need to be aware of when deriving their numbers. I learned a lot from this information.

CharityWatch considers a charity to be highly efficient when the end calculations produce a Program Percentage of 75% or higher, and a Cost to Raise $100 of $25 or less.

In CharityWatch's view, a program percentage of 60% or greater, and a Cost to Raise $100 of $35 or less, are the minimum efficiency standards reasonable for most charities. Ratios in this range typically indicate a "satisfactory" or "C range" rating.

So the absolute minimum target appears to be never spending more than 40% of our income to make a goal happen and ideally, striving to operate at about a 25% of revenue cost. I feel okay with making sure we always try to operate on less than 30% of our revenue and I strongly feel this is possible as we progress.

To date, I've basically personally donated a lot of our initial funding to get started with web servers, web development, actual charity work already performed in Nigeria, Venezuela and Philippines and some direct donations to individual in need and I've donated all my time to building the tools, chat rooms, and making posts and creating awareness of our launch and mission as well. It doesn't happen for free, but I've been happy to freely give all I could to get this going.

More recently as people have become aware of us, we have begun to receive small donations, gifts and support from individuals, groups and communities from around the STEEM Block Chain. We are incredibly grateful to these early supporters who have chosen to believe in us even as we are just beginning and only have small amounts of "proof of work" to show so far for our modest first forays into international charity tasks and actually carrying out direct acts of giving to those in need around the world.

So far we have just sort of barged ahead in an excited but not very organized way. It's worked out despite our lack of proper planning in some case and to date, in our first month since I launched this idea, we have worked with our own steem community grown volunteer team and some other groups so far to deliver food, shoes, school supplies, and some donations to other groups doing "good on the ground" in countries where the needs are simply not being met by local economics alone.

Well, with things getting "real" now and people becoming aware of our project here, it's time to be absolutely certain we are acting in the ways expected of us, meeting acceptable standards for organizations like ours and always being professional and as organized as possible about how we perform, and report on our performance.

Here is something else very interesting that I learned, which will guide decision making when holding things up to our "Be Strong To Be Useful" ideal.

Giving is a fixed pie, remaining steady at about 2% of the USA's gross domestic product (GDP) for over four decades. Because charitable dollars are limited and society's needs are not, it is vital that charities do not hoard the funds they raise. When a charity sets aside excessive funds for possible, future needs that may or may not ever occur, this necessarily makes these funds unavailable for other charities to use to address more urgent needs.

Charities that hoard donations are in some cases ignoring the intentions of donors who contributed in response to a solicitation for a charity's current programs, not programs that might be conducted five, eight, or even ten years in the future. - charitynavigator.com

Noted! We will get things going as quickly as we can when the money comes in. Only waiting long enough to amass funds to do the next most effective program we have decided to execute. Already we are in progress in three different countries and this will only expand as we grow, so there is no doubt there will always be some where we need to apply the funds we receive. I am not worried about the problem of "hording" but rather of always being able to raise enough to really make a difference as fast and as frequently as we possibly and logically can do so.

The salary question remained unanswered though until I found the information I was seeking at a site called TheBalance.com which had a very useful article to review on the topic here: https://www.thebalance.com/can-nonprofits-pay-staff-2501893

They literally opened the article with the two most pressing questions I had. Can a charity pay it's employees and what is a reasonable amount to of income to pay them.

Here are a few excerpts of what they suggested:

Can a nonprofit have paid employees?

Indeed, most nonprofits have staff. Some have thousands of employees, while others employ a couple of key people and then rely on volunteers for most of the essential work.

Does It Matter How Much You Pay Your Staff?

Usually, nonprofit pay is far from excessive, especially compared to salaries in the for-profit world.

Avoid High Turnover by Paying Well

More of a problem for nonprofits may be their too low pay. Recent discussions in the nonprofit sector have highlighted the inability of some charities to pay a "living wage" to their employees. In fact, some studies have found that annual turnover for nonprofits hovers in the 20 percent range, in significant part because of low pay.

Make sure that your nonprofit's staff receives compensation that is in line with salary surveys of similar groups. Be sure to factor in the cost of living in your area, the size of your budget, and the type of service your organization provides.

Avoid overpaying or underpaying your staff. The first could get you into trouble and the second will hamper your ability to recruit the best employees.

Okay, that all sounds reasonable enough and if we apply the max 30% operation cost target we can then come up with a way to ascertain what compensation might be possible while still restricting all other costs within the same 30% or so of the revenue the YouAreHOPE foundation raises.

For now, of course, I have a "day job" and will keep contributing my labor hours to this for free as a donation of my own, but eventually, in the next two years or so, I DO plan to fully retire from my former career in tech and do this full time exclusively. I work at it almost full time now, but when the time comes, it is comforting to know its "okay" for me to make a living wage while helping others live who may have no chance at a living wage at all in their poverty stricken nations and locales.

As long as all the costs are reasonable and transparent and ethical, drawing income from this above operating costs is something I can feasibly do, and as funding grows, and likewise that 30% margin gets larger, the goal will be to lower the percentage and increase the giving to actual program work in the field.

I have given or delegated effectively every single dime I have made on Steem so far in my time here. I will continue to do so, until such time as a modest salary is needed to replace the one I will retire from in a couple years. Seems like a plausible plan for now. I want to be able to do this forever, but to do so, I must again, "Be Strong To Be Useful" and that means I probably should eat now and then, keep the internet connected and pay the electric bill where I live and work every month, at least.

The finances will always be transparent on the chain, and I will always stand accountable for how your gifts and donations are used.

So that leaves us with governance. The UK based CaseInsurance.co.uk site that the orange image above came from gives clear and concise expectations on this topic and I am including that excerpt here, as it really summarizes so much of what I intend to do, and how I intend to do, as well as things I need to know, understand, and remember while executing my role as the founder, leader and change agent building this new kind of block chain based worldwide humanitarian aid organization.

The Public Benefit

This may surprise you, but your charity can’t just do whatever it wants! You’ll be responsible for ensuring that your charity operates for the public benefit and, ideally, you should be able to demonstrate the difference that your charity is making. When new ventures, initiatives or campaigns are considered, the trustees will be responsible for ensuring that these are for the public benefit and contribute to the charity’s purpose.

Governance

Charities are controlled with a governing document. You should become extremely familiar with this document as it maps out the charity’s purpose, methods, leadership and structure. Alongside your own governing document, there is a vast amount of law and regulation relating to charities. You, as a trustee, will be responsible for keeping up-to-date with current legislation and ensuring that you comply with both the law and your governing document. At a time where charity governance is under scrutiny this shouldn’t be taken lightly; you’ll be responsible for running the organisation appropriately and the buck stops with you!

The Charity’s Benefit

This is more about traditional leadership than anything charity-specific. As a leader in your charity, you’ll be responsible for making decisions, allocating resources and dealing with conflicts, crises and concerns. Every decision you make (or contribute to) should be made in the best interests of the charity. But don’t forget, this also includes wholeheartedly supporting majority decisions that you may not always agree with!

Resources

Your influence on resources doesn’t stop at allocation! You’ll be involved in managing the resources, protecting them, applying for more and reporting on their status. Resources include everything from money and staff to collection tins and websites. For all these resources, you must ensure that you manage them responsibly. This includes considering the previous four areas: accountability, public benefit, charity benefit and governance!

Care & Skill

This is about you. You’ll be required to undertake your duties with reasonable care and skill. You’re not going to know everything and everything won’t do things right all the time, but this is about doing the best that you can. When your skill set or knowledge falls short, you should seek out advice and guidance so that the decisions you make are the right ones.

-from caseinsurance.co.uk

There are some pretty impactful thoughts in there to ponder for sure.

I won't always do everything right. I will always try to execute effectively and with the purest of intentions. I am not by nature, a greedy person. I try to give more than I take in all my interactions and endeavors in life. I will always strive to do my best for the YouAreHOPE Foundation, our team, our recipients of beneficial programs and services and our donors and supporters, in all things.

This letter and my word is my personal promise to all of you to give this all I've got, and to work with your help to make a real difference in people's lives in the communities who need our help.

Once I am able to be certain we have dotted our i's and crossed our t's, I will publish a proper governance document for the YouAreHOPE Foundation to use as operating guidelines.

I would like to call anyone with real world global charity governance experiences to contact me to discuss how I might best document our own governance policies and guidelines. I'm a total newbie here, but I feel my heart and mind are strong, dedicated and aimed in the right direction.

Please do reach out to me if you have experience or appropriately similar examples of such documents, as once again, I'm learning this process on the fly, and I am definitely not experienced with creating such documents. Just a dose of solid honesty about myself with regard to that process, for sure!

To each of you and all of YAH's friends and co-community members who have already donated or helped us get going in other tangible and intangible ways, thank you for spreading the word, making donations and helping us complete our first three small missions.

Join us in our discord and let's brainstorm some more ways the block chain community can change the world with the power of borderless cryptocurrencies like Steem and the love of a community like all of you around the steem ecosystem!

Just click this link to join the conversation on ANY device:

https://discord.gg/zkTeKeS

How can you help @YouAreHOPE make a difference in the lives of others in economically distressed locales?

Make a direct donation of steem or sbd to @youarehope and we will use it to provide various basic human needs in places where people really need the help around the world via our hand chosen and carefully selected Agents of HOPE operating on the ground in the various regions we are able to operate in so far.

Make a delegation of any size to @YouAreHOPE so we can curate the efforts of our field agents and team members to bring awareness and financial encouragement and assistance to the volunteers themselves.

Share our posts with your resteems to help others become aware of our efforts.

Upvote our posts, which will turn into rewards that are treated as donations to the projects the foundation has running around the world.

Support the emerging new YAHCast Broadcasting Network, YouAreHOPEs audio video 24/7 worldwide multi-outlet streaming channel - soon to be filled with valuable content rooted in our principle four missions of Help, Opportunity, Purpose & Empowerment for all people in need of any of those things.

Come hang out in the YAH discord and help us grow the community, encourage the volunteers, brainstorm new ideas to help the world be a better place for everyone, and make some great, loving, kind and social new friends!

There is also a "bonus" thing you could do for me to help me help YouAreHOPE:

You could vote for my witness, @sircork , if you felt so inclined, as I am all about the future of the block chain, the power of steem and our community to do good in the world and I've never missed a block, ever, with no server downtime either! A vote for my witness, is a vote for more operational capability for YouAreHOPE should my witness position ever become profitable from block production. All funds will go to YAH Operations from my witness proceeds.

Volunteer, get involved, and perhaps lend me a hand and we can work together to give some good people out there some HOPE!

If you have read all of this and got through to the end of my longest post ever, congratulations! Thank you so much for being interested in the future of YouAreHOPE, and in our ideals, philosophies on governance and our mission at large.

You are amazing.

YOU are HOPE!

Yours in service,
@SirCork
Founder of the YouAreHOPE Foundation
http://YouAreHOPE.org