Following a review of the World Federation’s funding requirements and accounting policy, the Honorary Treasurer Br Reza Hooda presented a proposal to review the administration fee levied by The World Federation on its incoming donations. This followed successive presentations on the subject that commenced at the Wessex EXCO meeting in June 2013 and again at Mumbai in January 2014 where thorough deliberations were conducted.
Br Reza again went through the process of the review and presented his findings and proposal to the august body at Conference. This centered around identifying the true overhead costs of the organization and separating out the direct costs of delivering charitable projects. He highlighted that the overheads of the organization were in the region of 3-4% which is considerably lower than most other international NGOs of a similar size and other humanitarian charities – noting the total income of the World Federation being nearly £8m. He explained that this was only possible due to the input, commitment and dedication of numerous volunteers who provide their time pro-bono in the furtherance of the activities of the World Federation.
The resolution tabled to the august house was to reduce the administration fee to 3%. Several questions were raised as to how the World Federation would manage its expenditure with a reduced administration cost. Br Reza Hooda ably responded showing reconstructed financial data and projections to demonstrate that it would be possible to do so given the low overhead cost base. Further deliberations ensued regarding the second part of the resolution to give power to the Executive Council to amend the administration fee as and when required.
After much deliberation, debate and further explanations provided, it was the sentiment of the body that this change to the administration fee was a matter of policy and therefore a matter only for Conference to review. A friendly amendment to this effect was therefore made to the resolution before being re-presented to the august body for adoption.
Finally, the resolution was carried unanimously to reduce the administration fee of the World Federation from 7% to 3%.
This is a historic policy change that brings the administration fee to a level that better reflects the low overhead structure of the organization, and it is therefore hoped that with this level of transparency, donations to the World Federation and its membership will increase. Furthermore, it gives added confidence to the grassroots that The World Federation operates on an extremely low cost base relative to the output in terms of the plethora of charitable projects that are delivered – both internal community projects together with the wide scale humanitarian assistance provided where needed.