How to Choose a Charity to Give To in Kenya, and What to Ask

This article is against our own short-term interest, and we are publishing it anyway.

Anyone giving to a charity in Kenya has good reason to be careful. Registration is not difficult to obtain, oversight of small organisations is light, and a professional-looking website costs very little. If you are deciding where to give, you should be checking, and that includes checking us.

Here is what we would ask.

Six questions worth asking

1. Are you registered, and under what number? A real organisation answers immediately with a certificate number and the body that issued it. Ours is RSC/3811/CBO/2024, issued by the County Government of Kiambu on 22 February 2024. You can verify that with the county. Vagueness here is the single biggest warning sign.

2. Who are your officials? Named people with named roles who can be contacted. If a website shows a leadership team with no surnames, or stock photographs, be careful. If nobody will say who is accountable, nobody is.

3. Where does the money actually go? Ask for an account in the organisation's name, not an individual's. A personal M-Pesa number for donations is a serious warning sign, however plausible the explanation.

4. Can you show me what my last gift did? Not a brochure paragraph. A specific answer: which household, which centre, what arrived. An organisation that keeps records can answer this. One that cannot may still be honest, but it is not accountable.

5. Where do your impact numbers come from? If a website claims thousands of lives changed, ask how that was counted. There is nothing wrong with a good answer. There is a great deal wrong with an organisation that cannot give one.

6. Can I visit? Genuine local work can usually be seen. Reluctance is not automatically damning, since some work involves vulnerable people and cannot have visitors trooping through, but the reason should be about protecting them rather than about you.

Warning signs

Precise costed claims with no method. "Two thousand shillings feeds a family for a month" sounds rigorous and is usually invented. Ask how it was worked out.

Photographs of identifiable children used to raise money. Ask whether guardians consented in writing. An organisation casual about a child's privacy is casual about other things.

Pressure and urgency. Legitimate organisations have deadlines. They rarely need a decision in the next ten minutes.

Everything and everywhere. A small organisation claiming education, health, water, livelihoods, youth and disability across several counties is usually describing ambition rather than activity. Check what the registration actually permits.

No named costs at all. An organisation that will not discuss how it covers transport, phone credit and administration is either not paying them or not telling you.

Things that are not warning signs

In fairness, a few things look bad and are not.

Being small. A local organisation with a handful of people can be more traceable than a large one, because you can see exactly where your support went.

Having no impact figures yet. A new organisation that says "we have not counted that yet" is being more honest than one with confident numbers and no method.

Spending on administration. Work needs transport, phones and someone's time. An organisation claiming every shilling reaches beneficiaries is either subsidising itself invisibly or not being straight with you.

Apply this to us

Our registration number is published. Our officials are named on the about page. Our payment details are in the foundation's name. We have no impact figures, because we removed the ones that were here when we found nobody had counted them.

If you ask us what your gift did, we will tell you specifically. If we cannot, we will say so rather than produce an estimate that sounds like a fact.

Ask us the six questions. If the answers do not satisfy you, give somewhere else, and we would rather that than have you give to us on a false impression.