Gospel for Asia and Compliance with ECFA’s Standards: The 2015 Letter, Part 6

After about a month break, I am resuming this series.

In CEO and founder K.P. Yohannan’s recent “exclusive personal response” to the fraud lawsuit settlement involving Gospel for Asia, Yohannan traces GFA’s problems to a 2015 “confidential letter from a financial standards association we were part of, and of which we were a charter member.” That letter was from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and outlined 17 potential violations of ECFA financial standards. In October 2015, ECFA evicted GFA from membership. To help donors understand the nature of the concerns ECFA had about GFA, I am posting the concerns one at a time with commentary. You can read all of the posts by clicking this link.

Read the entire ECFA letter on GFA’s compliance issues here.

From that letter, here is the sixth compliance issue:

6. GFA solicits funds for narrower purposes than the eventual expenditure of the funds.

During ECFA’s review on August 12, GFA staff provided a document to demonstrate the flow of funds from GFA to field partners. ECFA learned that donor-restricted donations are appropriately tracked by particular revenue classifications. However, we also discovered, and it was confirmed by GFA staff, that the disbursement of the gifts are tracked in much broader categories. For example, donations were received and tracked for 38 different specific items including kerosene lanterns, bio sand filters, chickens, manual sewing machines, blankets, bicycle rickshaws, and others, but related expenses were only tracked as “community development.” In other words, donations were raised for 38 specific items, with the donations pooled for expenditure purposes instead of expending them specifically for the purposes raised.

ECFA did not find any evidence that donors to the 38 different giving categories had awareness that their gifts were grouped and used in a broader category than the specific categories in which the gifts were raised. ECFA’s staff raised concerns regarding GFA’s compliance with ECFA Standard 4, 7.1, and 7.2 in raising funds for a particular purpose but then failing to document the actual use of those funds by the particular donor-restricted purpose.

Subsequent to this conversation, on August 16, GFA staff indicated that GFA field partners will begin tracking expenditures by specific item accounts to provide adequate transparency as to the use of designated funds.

Our review of the board minutes did not indicate the GFA board had approved, or even been notified, that gifts solicited for very specific purposes were not being expended with the same specificity as the gifts were raised.

GFA led donors to believe their funds had been spent for specific items but there was no way to know if such intent had been followed since there was no documentation of that use. This policy had not been approved by the board. However, after this the board would have been alerted via the letter.

Francis Chan was on the GFA board by this time and had reassured people that he had sent in personal auditors to make sure funds were being spent as intended. Here is a May 15, 2015 email from his organization Crazy Love to me:

He has even gone to the lengths of sending two different auditors/accountants to research their financial practices. Both have come back with glowing reports.

His auditors/accountants missed a whole bunch of violations of ECFA standards. Chan continues to use this story. However, we know that GFA was kicked out of ECFA in October for numerous violations. GFA promised that they would reapply for ECFA membership which they have not done. GFA has not released audited financial statements. They have not disclosed to donors that their charity registration in India has been revoked.

Next: GFA’s financial statements do not appropriately report transactions with foreign partners.

5 thoughts on “Gospel for Asia and Compliance with ECFA’s Standards: The 2015 Letter, Part 6”

  1. They promise they’re going to get things sorted, and they really, really mean it this time!

    And so people give them another chance, and then forget about the problem, and business continues as usual. No, they’re probably not diverting as much money right now, because they’re facing more scrutiny, but there has been no systemic change. Even if you buy GFA’s spin on it, these sorts of problems are the kinds of things that should cause multiple senior people to lose their jobs for negligence, and that has not happened.

    1. Christians are Easy Marks.

      “Four-One-Nine just a game —
      You be the Mugu,
      I Be the Masta!”
      — “I Go Chop You Dolla”, Nigerian pop song about a con man

      * Four-One-Nine = a swindle/con game
      * Mugu = Fool, in the sense of an Easy Mark
      * Chop You Dolla = Make your money disappear; literally “eat your money”

    2. Only a fool would buy the spin. I once was among them but no longer. In this world you just cannot simply believe what anyone says when they are asking for Mammon for charity without being able to clearly and transparently see where it is actually going. Charity has never been money and it never will. It is actually helping people in need, not throwing bucks at people like this who lie for per$onal gain by telling you what you really want to hear.

      1. But even if you do buy their spin, it’s completely unacceptable that they haven’t fired multiple senior people. These kinds of irregularities – even the ones they’ve admitted to – are not the sort of thing that can be resolved with an “oops, sorry, we’ll do better in future”.

Comments are closed.