Hi again everyone!
We’ve had some feedback recently that our donors and members would like to know a little bit more about how your donations are handled. To that end, I’ve put together an ‘executive summary’ for the last three months – January through March 2014 – to share with you all.
These three months have been a very interesting time, with a hugely successful fundraising push in February for the South Africa Sorting Space Appeal and some fantastic new shop options, but also a couple of unexpected costs. Hopefully by sharing this information with you all, you’ll feel even more confident in supporting KasCare and the Knit-A-Square project.
First though, a couple of very important caveats!
- These results are not audited! We will not be auditing this information until the end of the Australian financial year, at the start of July.
- These results and graphs are approximations. They’re drawn from real numbers, but there are things I haven’t fully accounted for in the graphs; things like fluctuating exchange rates between different countries. As such, I haven’t shown specific numbers, just approximate percentages.
- This information is taken from the KAS Shop, the KasCare Paypal account, and the KasCare bank statements. If you have made a direct donation to any of the KasCare affiliated projects (like KAS SA or the JBay recycling project) without using an actual KasCare form, it will not be shown in these graphs.
Now, let’s get on to the fun stuff!
Where did KasCare funding come from?
Over the past three months, we’ve averaged a little under $3000 US per month in income. This has come almost exclusively from donations by members like yourselves, so we thank you humbly for your support.
About a third of our donations come from recurring donations from members. I really must make a special mention to these individuals, because they make it possible for us to plan safely and confidently for the future, knowing that this much at least will keep coming in every month.
The shop has also been very successful this year, although I’ll discuss that in a lot more detail very shortly.
I hope this graph makes it clear just how much we rely on and value your support as donors!
Where did KasCare funding go?
All of those donations allow us to do amazing things!
Over three quarters of the funds donated to KasCare went to KAS South Africa. This is the team on the ground who do the assembling and distribution of all the wonderful goodies that you produce! You can see the fantastic work that this team does in the reports from South Africa on the forum, as well as in all the beautiful photos from the sorting room!
As with all charities, there are running costs. PayPal in particular does come with a small fee on every transaction, but in exchange it provides a safe and low-risk way for people all around the world to donate. We want to make sure people feel confident in any online processes handling their money, so this extra security that PayPal gives us is very valuable.
You’ve probably noticed that purple segment with the * next to it. Most of this was a single, once off, but unexpected cost. It came about because of a small error made some time ago, which was only discovered earlier this year. That meant that a cost which should have been a few small payments made over several years, ended up being one large cost all at once! While it was certainly an unwelcome surprise, it is completely resolved now and you shouldn’t be seeing it again in any of our future reports.
The really good news is that even after covering our budgeted costs for KAS South Africa and all of our ongoing running expenses, we still had a small extra margin to put into our savings! This will become very important in the next couple of months, as South Africa is heading into winter and distribution costs start going up!
Which causes spoke most to us?
I mentioned earlier that I was going to speak in more detail about the shop. Here it is! The following graph shows the number of sales for each of our shop items (rather than the amount of money those items brought us).
The KAS Ops Sponsorship items introduced last year continue to go strong, with lots of support for sewing kits and paper for the creches.
I’m also delighted to see that we’ve had a few teachers coming through the shop, picking up copies of the KasKids Teacher Guide for their schools. Our teachers do a fantastic job of sharing both a love of knitting and a passion for KAS in their students, so they get double kudos here!
One of the new initiatives we kicked off this quarter was to move appeals into the shop too. You may have noticed that the Sorting Space Appeal had a specific page for donations, set up as part of the shop, rather than us simply asking you to use the “Donate Now” button. This allows us to identify exactly how much of the donated money was sent to us specifically for this cause, as opposed to just being a general purpose donation. That makes it easier to ensure that it is used for that cause, and for us to gauge how strong your support is for that particular cause. Clearly, everyone really supported the Sorting Space appeal. Thank you for your enthusiasm for this milestone change!
In closing…
In closing, I want to thank everyone for your ongoing support of KAS, whether you are a regular donator, an occasional donator, one of our dedicated crafters, or even just spreading the word. We appreciate the efforts of every single one of you.
This is the first financial report of its type, but hopefully not the last! It is my intention to provide similar sorts of details to everyone after each financial quarter.
I’d also love to hear feedback from you about these reports. Is there something I missed which you would like me to talk about? Would you like more detail? Less detail? Too many words, not enough pictures? 🙂 (I do that, I know!)
If you have questions about this, please ask them below and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Here’s to another exciting quarter coming up!
