The View from the Boardroom - UNDP Trinidad and Tobago

The View from the Boardroom - CEO Study on Corporate Social Responsibility in Trinidad and TobagoCHAPTER 3The Third Sector Revisited – Private Sector and Nonprofit PartnershipsThe United Way –Nonprofit Funding and Charitable Giving“What interested us when we first got involved with United Way on the upside was theconcept of UWTT’s vetting of charitable organisations to ensure that the organisationsand environment were bona fide. The downside was the knowledge that a portion ofthe money being collected would be used for administrative purposes. In short, whenwe spent a dollar on charitable organizations the full dollar goes there but if we sentit through United Way it’s probably discounted by the administrative costs of theorganization. We also realised, on the other side, that there are a number of NGOs inTrinidad and Tobago that are receiving funds from government and from organisationssuch as ours to support their efforts but in some of these institutions those fundsactually disappear into the pockets of persons that are running the show.So United Way appealed to us in that they were vetting these things, it is properlyorganised and administered and made sure that the money was well spent. There wasyet another appealing area of the whole thing and that is that an organisation as smallas ours gets inundated every single week with requests for charitable donations andit was somewhat easier for us to subscribe to United Way and to create a standardletter to say to the majority of them that we are already working with United Way andsuggests through this medium that they go through the United Way AccreditationProgramme. By so doing, they in turn could be certified and accredited for United Waysupport on a continuing basis.”Nicolas Galt, PresidentTCL Group of Companies52