(Ecns.cn)--"Without transparency, philanthropy will mire in a credibility crisis. Therefore, a small rumor can cause an Internet sensation. A tweet can erase almost all the good deeds of generations of Chinese," said John Fitzgerald, representative of the Ford Foundation in Beijing.
Under heavy criticism following the Guo Meimei incident, the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) rushed to debut an online pilot platform July 31 to disclose its donation information in a bid to demonstrate greater transparency.
However, the hasty move, though revealing certain data, is still far from satisfying.
"Choosy," erroneous figures
At this point, only the individuals donating 100,000 yuan ($15,500) and above and the companies donating no less than 500,000 yuan ($77,600) are allowed to track their money.
"The organization should not be 'choosy' when disclosing the donations," complained a woman who had donated 2,000 yuan ($311) to the earthquake-hit areas in Yushu, Qinghai Province.
Reporters from the Xinhua News Agency found on August 3 that the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CEPA) had also published a 150-page list of donations, but without any specification on where the money had been used.
The 2010 China Charity Transparency Report showed that up to 90% of donors did not know what happened to their money. "I donated 2,000 yuan in the wake of Wenchuan earthquake, but have never been told where the money was spent," said Gao in Shanghai.
At this, Wang Zhenyao, director of the One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University, pointed out that the long, complicated fund allocation procedures have added difficulties in providing feedback to the donors.
Even the published figures are riddled with errors. Some web users found that donations to a school (11.82 million yuan) and a health center (5.35 million yuan) in Yushu revealed by RCSC are 23% less than that on the official website of the Red Cross Society of Japan, which had 15.44 million ($2.4 million) and 6.96 million ($1.1 million), respectively.
"An imperfect information-disclosure system has long been the deep-rooted cause," explained Deng Guosheng, vice head of the NGO Research Center of Tsinghua University.
"The RCSC has been withholding information that should have been disclosed for too long," Deng noted. Therefore, errors cannot be avoided when abundant data had to be processed within a short period.
Deng added that since the RCSC and other charity organizations are still exploring ways to be as transparent as possible, people need to be patient.
