Public in the dark about the running of charities
By Xu Fang and Pan Zheng |
December 4, 2010, Saturday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ACCORDING to the latest survey on the levels of transparency from the nation's charities, 90 percent of the sampled netizens aren't satisfied with the current quality of information from charities.
The China Charity and Donation Information Center, a charity coordination institution managed by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, conducted the survey as part of the ministry's project to study the quality of information that charities release.
Liu Youping, deputy director of the center, said the ministry will issue guidance to direct charities on how best to publicize information next year, Beijing News reported.
The center selected 99 charity organizations at random and did an online survey covering 988 netizens.
The survey showed that more than 90 percent of the people questioned weren't satisfied with the levels of transparency and nearly 90 percent of the respondents had never received any feedback from charities after making donations.
Only 25 percent of Chinese charities were reported to have satisfactory levels of transparency. Financial information was released the least among all the areas of information, while information on the basic structure of organizations enjoyed the most openness.
In contrast to what appears to be normal practice, 96 percent of the sampled charity organizations agreed it was important to publicize information, and an earlier survey by the center showed that most charity organizations thought financial information should be the most transparent.
"Chinese charity organizations are still not used to publicizing their information," said Liu. "I think public pressure and challenges once people have been given the information is one of the major causes for this."
However, they have already improved in some fields compared with last year, such as publishing annual reports and refreshing information on their websites more regularly, he added.
The survey showed 54 percent of respondents expressed much concern on how much information a charity made public.
"A lack of guidelines on how to publicize information has hindered transparency," Liu said "The charity industry has no unified guidance on how to release information or a public release platform."
According to the survey, 42 percent of the sampled charities have no such guidelines in place at their organization.
The China Charity and Donation Information Center, a charity coordination institution managed by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, conducted the survey as part of the ministry's project to study the quality of information that charities release.
Liu Youping, deputy director of the center, said the ministry will issue guidance to direct charities on how best to publicize information next year, Beijing News reported.
The center selected 99 charity organizations at random and did an online survey covering 988 netizens.
The survey showed that more than 90 percent of the people questioned weren't satisfied with the levels of transparency and nearly 90 percent of the respondents had never received any feedback from charities after making donations.
Only 25 percent of Chinese charities were reported to have satisfactory levels of transparency. Financial information was released the least among all the areas of information, while information on the basic structure of organizations enjoyed the most openness.
In contrast to what appears to be normal practice, 96 percent of the sampled charity organizations agreed it was important to publicize information, and an earlier survey by the center showed that most charity organizations thought financial information should be the most transparent.
"Chinese charity organizations are still not used to publicizing their information," said Liu. "I think public pressure and challenges once people have been given the information is one of the major causes for this."
However, they have already improved in some fields compared with last year, such as publishing annual reports and refreshing information on their websites more regularly, he added.
The survey showed 54 percent of respondents expressed much concern on how much information a charity made public.
"A lack of guidelines on how to publicize information has hindered transparency," Liu said "The charity industry has no unified guidance on how to release information or a public release platform."
According to the survey, 42 percent of the sampled charities have no such guidelines in place at their organization.
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