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IGNORANCE of best practices can no longer be an excuse for charities that do not keep their house in order.
A comprehensive set of guidelines on how these custodians of public donations should run themselves was released yesterday.
They range from how charities should manage programmes and raise funds to who should sit on their boards.
The code of governance for charities and Institutions of Public Character (IPC) was drafted and finalised by the Charity Council after extensive public feedback.
It marks the first time that guidelines have been spelt out for all registered charities in Singapore, which are grouped according to the arts and heritage, community, education, health, religion, sports, social service and youth.
While some, like the social service sector, had their own codes of governance, others, such as religious groups, had none.
With such an overarching document looming, feedback to the draft was passionate.
A public consultation exercise between June and August drew responses from more than 700 charities, out of a total of about 1,900 in Singapore.
The council received 1,000 individual views and 200 written responses.
It considered the feedback and made the code 'less onerous' for charities to implement, said council chairman Fang Ai Lian.
For instance, the guideline now allows up to a third of a charity's board to be made up of paid staff.
In its draft, the council had proposed that the board should be totally separate from its executive management.
But religious charities and many small arts and sports groups asked for leeway on this, said Mr Rajaram Ramiah, a lawyer who sits on the council.
The reasons were that spiritual leaders of many religious groups are often paid officers and board members. As for arts and sports groups, many are so small that they have trouble finding extra people to sit on the board.
The council said there are other checks to make sure the board is independent. For example, a paid staff member on the board cannot decide his own salary or be the chairman.
The council was set up in October last year to help shape the sector after it was rocked by several high-profile scandals.
The code is a set of best-practice guidelines that is not mandatory. But charities that do not comply with parts of it will have to explain why, said Mrs Fang, who is also chairman of accounting firm Ernst and Young.
'We want to share best practices in the sector to make it easier for charities to regulate themselves,' she said.
There is some way to go before this can be achieved as charities need to be a lot more transparent and accountable.
All of them will have to account for how compliant they are to the Commissioner of Charities by March 31 next year.
Charities that are IPCs - which means their donors can get tax deductions - will have to make this information public from April 1, 2009.
How well they adopt the code will be taken into account when they renew their IPC status, Mrs Fang said.
Charities yesterday welcomed the revised code.
Mr Chong Tze Chien, director of arts group, The Finger Players, lauded the 'flexibility' given to charities to explain why they cannot comply with certain sections of the code.
'Our charity sector is so diverse,' he said. 'It would have been unfair if the guidelines left no room for negotiation.'
radhab@sph.com.sg
theresat@sph.com.sg
CHARITY BOARD MEMBERS NOT GIVEN TERM LIMIT, SINGAPORE
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