[SCAW-E-Letter] SCAW E-Letter for September: The Finance Committee

[SCAW Webmaster]

Behind The Scenes with Sleeping Children’s Finance Committee
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Working on behalf of SCAW’s donors and volunteers is a group of
committed, capable volunteers that make up the Finance Committee. What
do they do, you ask? Well, lots of things – let’s look at three
important ones: the SCAW Investment Account, Overseas Reporting, and
Annual Reporting.

SCAW works on the principles of openness and transparency. For
Finance, this means being able to show donors as clearly and simply as
possible how their money was spent. It’s not rocket science -- 100
cents of the bedkit dollar goes to the child. So as they say, let’s
“follow the money” and see where it goes with SCAW.

Murray Dryden, with his incredible vision and generosity, set up an
Investment Account to pay SCAW’s operating expenses. This enables SCAW
to guarantee to donors that every cent of their bedkit donation is
used to buy items for the child. Not one cent is used for operations.
The Finance Committee develops and recommends policies to the Board of
Directors that guide how these funds are invested. Doing so takes
time, expertise, and experience. And fortunately for SCAW, your
Finance team brings all these qualities.

The current Investment Policy restricts SCAW to investing in high
quality corporate and government bonds rated AA or higher (that’s
Finance talk for “there had better be no surprises”). Finance receives
professional independent advice and then decides which quality bonds
and other fixed income instruments to buy. Thankfully, SCAW has
incurred no losses on its investments, even during the horrendous
problems in the financial markets over the past few years. So these
investments “keep ticking” and generating interest, which is used to
pay SCAW’s operating expenses.

Meanwhile Finance turns its attention to another priority: reporting
on bedkit distributions. Each SCAW team that returns from an overseas
distribution brings back an Overseas Reporting Package (or “ORP” as
SCAW folks call it). Finance developed this document so each overseas
partner (Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions’ and various local community service
organizations) with whom SCAW works can report on how they spend the
donor dollars they received.

In the ORP, the overseas partner provides information on suppliers, a
detailed cost breakdown of the bedkit, commentary explaining major
changes from the prior year, and other information. Finance is
interested in knowing what steps our partner took to get the best
value for money. For example, SCAW requires that the overseas partner
obtain three competitive quotes for at least the seven most expensive
items in the bedkit.

Finance reviews the ORP from each distribution in detail, and makes
recommendations that are sent to the overseas partner. The following
year, Finance follows up to review what steps were taken by our
partner to implement these recommendations. All documentation is kept
on file at the SCAW office for review by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
in the event of an audit.

The next item that occupies Finance’s attention is the preparation of
annual Financial Statements and reporting to the CRA. SCAW believes it
is important to have an external audit of its financial results, to
reassure donors that a professional and independent “set of eyes” has
looked at how donor monies are spent and how the assets of the charity
are being managed.

These audited statements are available for review by anyone, simply by
contacting the SCAW office. Finance also prepares financial highlights
which appear on the SCAW website. A link on the site takes the reader
directly to the CRA website to review the Annual Information Return
SCAW prepares for them. In this way, Finance tries to make its
financial results transparent and easy to access for anyone who wishes
to see them.

Ted Swanston
for the SCAW Finance Committee
Sleeping Children Around the World

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Sleeping Children links of interest:
===============================================
The 2009 SCAW Calendar is now available for $10. More information here:
<http://bit.ly/LddL>
If you'd like to read the latest trip reports, you can select one here:
<http://www.scaw.org/reports/index.html>
The latest Live Reports are also on the Web:
<http://bit.ly/H5ay>