Koreans growing stingy on donation

By Kim Se-jeong

Lee Kyung-soon, a Seoul resident, and her husband stopped donating 10,000 won to an NGO helping poor children, to which the couple had sent the money every month more than a decade, two months ago.

They said their decision was made by a recent murder case involving Lee Young-hak who was indicted for murdering his teenage daughter’s friend after raping her. Lee was quite a well-known person in Korean society. His rare incurable disease and struggle to survive and support his family was featured on television years ago and drew many people to give him donations. However, police found he maintained a lavish lifestyle financed by the donated money.

“We began to ask ourselves how our donated money was used,” Lee Kyung-soon said. “The organization never told us anything about how the money was spent. My husband was particularly outraged about that. So that’s it! We decided to stop.”

Lee is not alone in feeling this way. In fact, she is among a growing number of people who have withdrawn from donation initiatives in recent years.

According to a 2017 survey by Statistics Korea, only 26.7 percent of respondents answered they were willing to make donations, down from 36.4 percent in 2011.

A survey by the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs showed the growing reluctance more clearly.

Among 2,000 respondents, 964 said they didn’t make donations and 23.8 percent of them explained this was because they didn’t have enough trust in the organizations that collect the money. Distrust was the second biggest reason following personal financial situations which 52.3 percent of respondents pointed to. Among those who made donations, 61.7 percent answered they had no knowledge about how their money was used.

Koreans were never generous donors. Many still feel that they aren’t well off enough to donate. Among international NGOs, it’s not a secret that the country is one of the most challenging places to succeed in fundraising.

The murder case was a big blow to what’s already a shrinking donation culture, but it was not the only bad story.

In August, a local NGO offering education to the poor was found to have embezzled 12.8 billion won ($11.7 million) in donated funds. A news outlet that broke the story said the embezzlement began in 2014, with the money paying for the staff’s luxurious car purchases and overseas trips. The outlet also disclosed video footage of a lavish party taking place during an overseas trip.

In 2010, the Community Chest of Korea, one of the biggest social welfare organizations here, was also accused of covering staff entertainment costs with collected money.

A law is in place to require organizations that run on donations to release financial statements.

“But the fact that the law is there means little,” said Hwang Shinie, executive director at the Korea Association of Fundraising Professionals.

The law requires almost 3,500 organizations to disclose their financial statements every year, but “there are way more organizations that don’t have to abide by the rule,” Hwang said. The number of non-profit organizations registered with the government is currently more than 16,000 currently.

The executive director said she and her fellow fundraisers feel the dampening impact of the murder case and embezzlement scandal on donation culture, adding that what’s needed is not a new law but a voluntary initiative to build trust and communication between donors and recipient organizations.

Next week, her association is launching a new campaign by NGOs to pledge better communication with individual donors.

“We believe it’s time to discuss ways to communicate better with individual donors. It’s not about what we report to the government and tax agency. We need to develop stories to be told to donors so that they understand what we do and how we do the work.”

Lee Kyung-rim, executive director of Seum, an NGO helping children of prison inmates, echoed Hwang and expressed concern over bias.

“Yes, there are bad stories. But there are also many good stories in which organizations obey the rules and are committed to the work they were created to do, including my organization. I hope people won’t think only bad things about donating.”