What Transparency Means to Lift A Life Foundation

Every organisation says it is transparent. The word has been used so freely that it now conveys almost nothing, so rather than claim it, here is what we actually do, and what we deliberately do not.

We took our own numbers down

Until recently this website carried impact figures. Thousands of lives touched. Hundreds of children in school. Dozens of communities served. It also listed a leadership team, described a founding story, and named six programmes.

Almost none of it was true. It came from a template, and nobody had counted anything.

We removed all of it. There are now no headline impact numbers on this site, and there will not be until somebody has counted something and can show the working. That is a strange thing for a charity to admit publicly, and we would rather admit it than leave it standing.

If you saw those figures before and made a decision based on them, we are sorry. The version you are reading now is one we can defend line by line.

What we publish, and why

Our registration. Certificate RSC/3811/CBO/2024, issued by the County Government of Kiambu on 22 February 2024, Ruiru Sub County, Gitothua Ward. You can verify that with the county.

Our officials. Eunice Wangari Muthoni as Chairperson, Judith Muthoni Wangari as Secretary, Peter Minja Macharia as Treasurer. Any two of the three sign on the account. Named people, accountable to the name.

What we are registered to do. Three activities: caring for orphans and vulnerable children, the elderly and people with disabilities; advocacy; and networking and community building. We used to advertise six programmes. Now we describe the three on the certificate, because claiming work you are not registered for is its own kind of dishonesty.

Where money goes. One paybill, one bank account, both in the foundation's name and both published.

What we will not publish

A percentage split we have not had checked. This site previously said 85% to programmes and 10% to operations. Nobody had audited that. A donor deciding on the strength of an unverified percentage is being misled, however flattering the number.

Costed impact claims. "Twenty-five dollars keeps a child in school for a month" was on eleven pages here. It sounds precise. It was invented, and it was in dollars, in Kenya.

Photographs of children without consent. Where a story involves a child, we need their guardian's permission in writing before anything is published. No exceptions, including where the story would raise money. A charity that trades a family's dignity for a donation has already lost what it exists to protect.

Testimonials we wrote ourselves. There are none on this site. If one ever appears, a real person will have said it.

Being a CBO, honestly

We are a Community Based Organisation, not an NGO, and the difference matters.

A CBO is registered at county level, operates locally, and is subject to lighter oversight than a national NGO. Our obligations are real: annual renewal, a maintained diary, quarterly statistical returns to the county. But nobody should assume the scrutiny is equivalent to that of a large registered NGO, because it is not.

Which is exactly why we would rather over-explain. The less external audit there is, the more the burden of proof sits with us.

What accountability looks like in practice

If you give to us, you may ask what your gift did, and we will tell you specifically. Not a brochure paragraph, but which household or which centre and what arrived.

If you are a business or an institution needing documentation for your own reporting, ask and we will provide what we hold. If we do not hold something, we will say so rather than produce an estimate that looks like a fact.

If we make a mistake, we will correct it here rather than quietly delete it. This article is itself an example.

What is still missing

Honesty about transparency includes being honest about the gaps.

We do not yet publish audited annual accounts. We do not yet publish counted impact figures. Our full founding story is still being documented properly rather than summarised. Those are real gaps and we are not going to paper over them with confident-sounding language.

What we can offer today is a verifiable registration, named officials, published payment details, and an undertaking to say only what we can evidence.

If that is not enough for you yet, that is a reasonable position. Ask us the hard questions and see whether the answers hold up.