How we transfer donations to India
When asked to raise funds for the hostels in Balangir and Diptipur the team at Abound knew that would be challenging, both to find generous donors and a transparent and effective process to send money from the UK to the hostel in rural Odisha, India. Well God directed us to you our generous donors (thank you!) and to an effective process. Here’s how we did it……
Collecting donations and moving money across national borders requires effective bank accounts to control the inflow of monies and to forward these to their intended target in India. For the Abound team to create its own UK charitable organization to manage these funds would be a significant undertaking and time consuming. The request for support from Christian Endeavour Hostel (CEH) came with an urgency to find donations and transfer the money as soon as possible. Post-Covid, CEH wanted to reestablish the education for the children who had already commenced their education and so the hostels opened again for a reduced number of children. This required incredible sacrifice by the local team, including drawing no salary and contributing to the food budget of the children from their own pockets! Clearly this was unsustainable for long, therefore we had to find the easiest and quickest way to get finances to India.
In addition to handling donation monies with probity here in the UK we needed to comply with the Indian FCRA regulations (the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act). Essentially all foreign monies have to be received into a government assigned bank account and only used for the purposes approved by the government. The account is audited to ensure that all expenditure complies with the stated objectives of the charity. CEH had applied for government approval for their charity and this was finally received in June 2023.
So rather than start our own charity with its own bank accounts we thankfully had the option to partner with an organisation that has done this already. Abound approached Stewardship UK to confirm that CEH could be considered as one of their International Partners. After the receipt of CEH’s registration in India as an approved FCRA organisation they applied to Stewardship UK to become an International Partner. On completion of Stewardship’s own due diligence, CEH became an approved International Partner in July 2023. This status allows donors to make donations to Stewardship UK, assigning monies for the work of CEH. Stewardship UK also collects any GiftAid received and then forwards money to CEH.
This process is now in full operation, meaning that donors can be assured that their monies are being collected by a UK charity who has vetted CEH itself and are satisfied that CEH represents a trustworthy organisation for donations to be forward to them. Stewardship has also well-established bank transfer mechanisms to FCRA approved bank accounts which allow money to reach the CEH account for their use.
Abound also has some contacts in the USA and we therefore needed to have a similar arrangement for any donations from the USA using an US 501(c)3 charitable organisation. We were led to Life International Inc which already sends money to another Indian charity using their FCRA bank account. On hearing the Abound and CEH story, Life International agreed to act as the conduit directly to the CEH Indian bank account for any US donations.
We are so grateful that God has provided two wonderful charities that have enabled us to securely collect donations and speedily pass them to CEH in India without the need for Abound to engage in the costly and time-consuming task of creating charities in the UK and USA.