Financial Records
At Nourish Bangladesh, we are always trying our best to keep the accounting transparent and easy to follow. To this end, we are disclosing a significant amount of information here about our financial records and practices.
CAN YOU SHARE SOME DETAILS ON HOW MUCH HAS BEEN RAISED AND DISBURSED?
Yes, the following links provide constantly updated information on donations we have received (before transaction fees), the funds we have disbursed so far, and our annual financial statements for US operations. For best viewing please open the documents on a device with a large screen (e.g., laptop, desktop, ipad).
FINANCIAL STATEMENT (USA) (click here)
DONATIONS RAISED (click here)
FUNDS DISBURSED (click here)
WHAT IS THE OPERATING COST OF NOURISH BANGLADESH?
There are some minimal costs associated with running Nourish Bangladesh such as an annual website domain fee and some 501(c)(3) registration related fees. These fees amount to less than a couple of hundred of dollars and are borne by the Board of Directors. It is thus true that 100% of all donations made to Nourish Bangladesh after transactional fees are sent to our vetted implementers.
There are two types of transactional fees that are difficult to avoid. The first involve fees taken by the transaction processor when donations are made via GoFundMe and PayPal. Everytime you use a major credit or a debit card (e.g., Visa, Mastercard) to make a payment, whether it be at a grocery store or a non-profit website like Nourish Bangladesh, there is an underlying transaction processing firm (e.g., Paypal, Stripe) that charges the vendor (in this case Nourish Bangladesh). Thus, any donations made via GoFundMe or Paypal are subjected to a fee between 2% and 3%. Click here to learn more about the fees associated with GoFundMe. Paypal charges a slightly reduced transaction fee since we are a registered 501(c)(3). Click here to learn more about the fees associated with paying via Paypal.
The second transactional fees is associated with sending funds to Bangladesh. This usually amounts to less than 1% of the amount we send. We do our due diligence in finding a cheap but reliable way of sending funds to Bangladesh.
IS THERE ANY WAY TO AVOID THE PAYMENT TRANSACTION FEES?
There are at least three ways to avoid or considerably reducing the transaction fee such as those associated with making donations via Paypal or GoFundMe. In partidular, donations made via Zelle and Facebook are not subjected to any transactional fees. Zelle is superior in that the money is transfered instantly. However, this service is available only in the US. Not only does Facebook charge no transactional fees for donations made to Nourish Bangladesh from most high income countries (including Canada, UK, Australia) but they also convert the currency to USD at a fair rate (based on our own research). The slight inconvenience on our end is that the funds donated via Facebook reach us about a month or so later. However, since Nourish Bangladesh has access to credit, it works out fine. Another option is to write us. check or make a direct deposit to our bank account. In both cases, make sure you send us an email providing us with some transactional details of the deposit being made.
