Open book policy « Charlie Teo Foundation

When it comes to our books, we’re an open book

At the Charlie Teo Foundation we’re not only changing the game when it comes to research, but also when it comes to financial transparency. Yes, we’re an open book.

Why are we stating this?

Here in Australia there are no mandatory standards or rules defining how charities report on their costs. This means charities classify costs in different ways, and are rarely transparent to donors about how this is done. This makes it almost impossible to properly compare one charity to another. Many charities classify certain costs as program expenses not as admin costs if they feel they are directly attributable to the activities of the charity. This may include costs like a portion of employee salaries.

We’ve decided to do things differently

At the Charlie Teo Foundation what you see is what you get. Our numbers may not look as good as other charities but that’s primarily because we don’t do any cost allocations that could make our numbers look more favourable.

Our Commitment to You

1. Publish easy-to-understand graphs on our website.

2. Update these after the end of each financial quarter.

3. Report on how we’re spending our total income. We’ll also report on our charity reserves. These are funds saved before being committed and spent in pursuit of our purpose - to beat brain cancer.

4. Be clear. So just know that whenever we talk about our “costs”, we are talking about both our fundraising costs and admin costs.

5. Publish our audited reports for each financial year.

Let’s breakdown our spending even further