The new Code of Governance for Charities

In the past couple of years we’ve all been following some fairly high profile charity scandals in the media. Not just big corporate charities like NKF, Youth Challenge, and currently Ren Ci, but also some cases of smaller charities that have had problems being accountable for their running.

It’s not necessarily the case, although it might be, that dishonesty is involved. Charities are often manned (personned?) and run by volunteers who are good-heartedly giving something back to the community, but aren’t necessarily trained or qualified for the role they are taking.

Moh Hong Buddhist Shrine is a charity, registered with the Singapore Government. Charities are set up to advance a cause beneficial to the community, which includes education, religion, arts, welfare, sport, health and a range of other things. There is also another category of charity called Institutions of Public Character (IPCs) which are mainly institutions and trust funds.

To help charities and IPCs in good management and operations, the government has recently drawn up a Code of Governance for Charities and IPCs. It includes guidelines for charities in good practices, such as how many trustees should be on a committee, what forms a quorum at a meeting, bookkeeping, conflicts of interest, asset management, contracts for services and the like.

Moh Hong Buddhist Shrine will certainly be doing everything possible to comply with the new Code of Governance.

The Chairman and Secretary of the management committee attended a briefing with a representative of the Charities Unit of the government on Friday, 22 February. They report that at first glance Moh Hong, which is run entirely by volunteers, complies with most of the standards of good governance and very few changes are required. Over the next couple of months they will be going through the code in detail to see whether any changes need to be made or whether Moh Hong should take advantage of any of the training, consultation services or government funds that have been set up to help charities with best practices.