Charities must be registered in Hong Kong and actively providing services to benefit the local community.

PRIOR TO SIGN UP

Check legal status – ensure that the beneficiary partner is a registered charity under Section 88 of the Inland Revenue Ordinance by obtaining a copy of the charity registration certificate;

Check financials - ensure that charity provides a copy of its most recent audited financial statements;

Check activity - review website, annual reports and/or newsletters for understanding of the charity’s structure, history and programmes;

Check management - meet with the management team and other relevant staff to ensure there's a group of passionate people behind the scenes.

ON AN ONGOING BASIS

Check for dormancy - obtain updates on programmes at least once a year to ensure charity hasn't become dormant. This may be in the form of visits to the charity’s office, email correspondence, receipt of newsletters and/or a review of their annual report;

Check for changes - contact charity at least once every calendar year to ensure we have the current staff contacts. If there have been significant changes, we request a meeting to get to know the new team;

Check for receipts - we collate and transfer funds to beneficiaries every calendar quarter. We consolidate payment, provide reports about individual donations to each charity and liaise with them thereafter to obtain receipts;

Check for impact - each year the charity beneficiaries provide information about the impact of their services within the local community, and we have been invited to join some of these programmes when feasible;

Check for compliance – via the agreement signed at the outset, all charity beneficiaries are legally obliged to notify Charitable Choice within 30 days if it ceases to have Section 88 Status or changes its name or scope of services;

Our vetting process is carried out via an interactive annual questionnaire with each charity partner to ascertain the relevant information.

Charitable Choice reserves the right to remove beneficiaries who do not comply with the above checks and we have done so on several occasions since our inception in 2010.

All charity beneficiaries on the Charitable Choice platform, and in fact, Charitable Choice ourselves, are registered charitable organisations with Section 88 status.

To find out more about what this means, and how Section 88 charities are different from not-for-profit organisations and/or Voluntary Organisations, please visit the Inland Revenue's website here.