Repeated calls for transparency
Catalyzed by the Guo Meimei scandal, the RCSC has taken a "first step" in publishing part of its financial statements. However, this is just the beginning of a huge country-wide transparency-building project, given that there are altogether 2,270 foundations in China.
"Even the data from different departments of the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) are different from each other, let alone detailed data from the various organizations in the regulation of the MCA," explained Cheng Gang, CEO of the China Foundation Center (CFC), a leading source of China foundation information.
Speaking of the difficulties in collecting data before the platform launched, Cheng said that many foundations either were reluctant to reveal their financial reports or refused to provide detailed ones.
"Last year we tried our best, but only received annual financial reports from more than 100 foundations," Cheng added.
Even now, though up to 92% of the organizations have given their reports, only 24% of them have specified their expenditures.
"A bureaucratic mentality and an incapability of implementing and managing have led to the slow progress in the transparentization of the foundations, most of which are public ones backed by the government," said Geng Hesun, vice president of the CFC.
"The financial management in many organizations is quite poor," Geng explained, adding that though there is training for all the foundations from the Ministry of Finance, the programs are usually quite simple.
"Without financial talents or the awareness to enhance the financial management, will the organizations be willing to show their accounting reports to the public?" questioned Geng.
Piercing the veil
With Ruan Heng, former executive vice chairman at RCSC's Kunming branch, being accused of using public funds to buy products for personal use, the public has shown greater concern over every penny they donate to charitable organizations, which has restricted the overall development of philanthropy in China.
At this, Wang Zhenyao said that the foundations should get rid of bureaucracy and be an organization of and for the society.
As early as 2006, the Measures for the Information Disclosure of Foundations was promulgated requiring foundations to disclose their annual work report, financial report, and information on donation activities and welfare funding projects.
However, experts mentioned that such regulations lack detailed implementation specifications, thus should be improved upon to make it more binding.
Third-party supervisors should also be introduced, according to Lu Hanlong, vice head of the Chinese Sociological Association.
"A supervising system and project evaluating mechanism that involve an independent third-party evaluating organization, the media, donors, and the whole public should be established," added Lu.
