Most charities communicate their efficiency as a percentage. “88% of donations go directly to programs.” “94 cents on the dollar reach beneficiaries.” “Less than 5% spent on overheads.” These ratios are calculated retroactively, after the books close, against a definition of “program” the charity itself controls. They are not lies, but they are also not auditable in real time. They are a marketing layer over a normal cost-allocation system.
Our policy is different in two specific ways. It is structural, not retroactive. And it is verifiable, not asserted.
Three pools, three accounts, no shuffling
Hearts of Hope runs three financial pools, kept legally and operationally separate. They sit in three individually-named bank accounts at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Inter-pool transfers are forbidden by treasury policy and require a unanimous board resolution to override. Reconciliation is run daily and signed off by two officers each morning.
Pool A · the donor pool
Every public donation lands here. Funds are restricted by donor intent — for example, “for clean water” or “for the East Africa famine response” — and exit only as a program disbursement to a vetted partner, within 90 days, less only the card-processing fee paid to the payment processor. That is the only deduction. There is no platform fee, no admin fee, no overhead allocation, and no implicit ratio.
Pool B · operations
Salaries, rent, technology, marketing and audit fees are funded separately, by donors who explicitly designate to operations, by margins on our fundraising channels (TCG Vault, branded merchandise) and — in time — by endowment income. About 4% of donors choose to designate to operations on top of a program gift. We’re grateful, but it is not the default and never will be.
Pool C · the endowment
A permanent capital base. Principal is never spent. Conservative investment yield flows annually into Pool B. The endowment exists so that operations are funded by the foundation’s own balance sheet, not by a slice of every gift.
How we keep it honest
A policy that lives only on a website is a slogan. The 100% promise is enforced by five distinct, overlapping mechanisms — each designed so that a failure in one is caught by the next.
- Bank-level segregation — three accounts, signed off daily by two officers.
- Quarterly board attestation — the Treasurer formally attests that no inter-pool transfers occurred.
- Monthly reconciliation pack — bank reconciliation, donor-pool aging, and partner disbursement schedule, available to donors on request.
- Real-time public ledger — every movement greater than $10,000 is published within 24 hours, with a unique entry ID.
- Whistleblower channel — any staff member, donor, partner or beneficiary can confidentially escalate a suspected breach to the chair of the Audit Committee, bypassing the executive team entirely.
Each mechanism is independent. A failure at the bank shows up in the daily reconciliation. A failure in reconciliation shows up at the quarterly attestation. A failure of the board shows up in the public ledger. The 100% policy is not a hope. It is a stack.
Where we are honest about the limits
We are a newly registered Australian charity. Our first Annual Information Statement will be lodged with the ACNC by 31 December 2026. Until then, all dollar figures on the site are management estimates and will be reconciled to the audited AIS at that point. An external statutory audit is part of our growth roadmap; we will publish the engagement letter, the auditor identity and the full signed opinion as soon as the engagement is finalised.
We are not asking you to trust us. We are asking you to read the ledger.
How to verify any specific gift
- Financials page — Pool A, B and C broken out, with every program line itemised and the supporting reconciliation packs attached.
- Where Most Needed— the live allocation decision, published every Wednesday, showing where last week’s unrestricted dollars went.
- 100% policy — the structural rules in plain English, with the verbatim language reproduced from our governance charter.