Where Your Dollars Went

In 2018, over 93 percent of TWC2’s spending went towards charitable activities, benefiting our clients in a direct or relatively direct way. This reflects our philosophy of frugality we are proud of.

As can be seen from the pie chart ‘Total expenditure, 2018’, we spent very little on governance costs and on fund-raising.

The numbers behind the pie charts (and the table below providing the detailed breakdown) come from the externally audited accounts for 2018. Our financial year coincides with the calendar year.

TWC2’s accounts are audited in accordance withe Charity Accounting Standard (CAS), which Singapore’s Commissioner of Charities strongly recommends non-profit organisations to abide by.

TWC2 runs a considerable variety of charitable activities in order to realise our mission of

  • assisting workers in need of urgent support (e.g. meals, shelter and transport subsidies),
  • helping them access available avenues of redress, and t
  • advocating for better policies governing work migration.

The split by type of charitable activity can be seen from the pie chart below.

Detailed numbers behind the two pie charts can be seen from the table below. Please note that ‘$’ refers to the Singapore Dollar.

EXPLAINING THE CATEGORIES

Singapore’s Charity Accounting System (CAS) makes an important conceptual distinction among three broad types of expenditure. They are:

Cost of generating funds

These are expenses incurred by activities whose purpose is to raise funds. TWC2 generally avoids organising splashy fund-raising events, relying instead on appealing to donors either through personal contact or through social media.

Consequently, we spent very little on raising funds. In 2018, a mere $13.1k or 1.3% of total expenditure, was classed by our auditors as such.

Cost of charitable activities

This category forms the bulk of our 2018 spending — about 93.3% of total expenditure. As shown in the second pie chart above, this category can be further split by programme or purpose.

Governance costs

These are expenses that would have to be incurred by the organisation even if we did little by way of charitable activities. They include accounting costs and audit fees; bank charges; the cost of holding an Annual General Meeting and whatever is needed to comply with law; and a share of rent, telecommunication costs and office supplies.

In 2018, we spent only $53.2k, or 5.4% of total expenditure on these functions.

OUR VARIOUS CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES

Our free meals programme, benefitting out-of-work migrant workers, is the largest of our projects in terms of expenditure. Not only is nourishment essential for human life, this programme creates an easy, welcoming contact point for injured and salary-unpaid workers to come and talk to our volunteers. We are right on the street, and it is not in the least intimidating to walk up and talk to us.

Simple queries can be handled by our volunteers. Workers with more complex problems are referred to our main office where help from social workers will be forthcoming.

Our social work assistance comes under the moniker ‘Social Worker Always There’ or SWAT for short.

Our expert staff provide advice and case assistance to workers in need. Common types of assistance provided by social workers include:

  • Calculating what their correct salaries and overtime pay should be and how to commence a claim;
  • Advising workers about their rights when employers become abusive or unreasonable, including helping workers flee when trapped;
  • Helping workers make police reports when assaulted, confined or cheated;
  • Assisting them in filling forms and communicating with government departments — many workers aren’t confident in English;
  • Overcoming obstacles in obtaining medical care;
  • Ensuring they are paid their due compensation.

As can be seen from the list, our social workers fill a critical need. The salary costs, phone, wifi, training and incidental expenses of social workers, and a share of rent, make up the bulk of this spending.

In order to carry out our many activities, TWC2 needs a multi-purpose space. We rent the upper floor of a shophouse in Little India as our ‘DaySpace’.

Among the many uses it is put too are:

  • Safe space in the day for workers to rest in quiet;
  • Registration of clients and consultation (especially when they come in big groups, too big for our office to accommodate);
  • Emergency shelter when workers have had to flee company accommodation in fear;
  • Volunteer induction and training;
  • Public talks;
  • As a location where other charity groups can conduct joint activities with TWC2 (e.g. free medical check-ups).

Effectively, DaySpace is TWC2’s frontline service delivery location that is easy for Bangladeshi and Indian workers to find. It is also a space for organising volunteers and service delivery.

TWC2 also helps workers with transport costs. This is an area where regulations (and MOM) provide no help to workers at all. Employers are not mandated to help foreign workers with their transport costs even though hospitals require them to show up for their doctor appointments or physiotherapy. Failure to show up could jeopardise their work injury claims.

Under Project FareGo, we provide top-ups to workers’ stored-value fare cards so that they do not miss their appointments. This programme has rigorous eligibility criteria to keep our costs down.

Although employers are required by law to pay for medical care, their liability is capped. Some workers need more medical care beyond the cap. Others find that their employers deny that the injury was work-related, with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) suspending their treatment options until the matter is sorted out. Unfortunately, this can take months, prolonging pain and suffering or jeopardising a full recovery.

Moreover, during the lengthy period recovering from a work injury, a few are hit with an unrelated illness and need to see a doctor or dentist. TWC2 steps in when treatment is urgently needed.

We have a small programme to assist workers with the cost of housing.

Here again, accommodation is supposed to be the employer’s responsibility, but there are cases where the employer has made it extremely difficult (e.g. threatening) for the employee to continue living in the company dorm. For his own safety, the worker needs to a place to stay away distant from the employer. This however means the worker needs to pay his own rent.

TWC2 assists workers with financial subsidies. To keep costs within control, the programme operates with extremely strict eligibility criteria.

From experience, this approach of providing subsidies is more flexible than running a shelter in the normal sense, which tends to come with fixed costs.

For the injured and salary-unpaid workers under our care, the Discover Singapore team of volunteers takes them out once or twice a month on excursions and other sports-type activities. This alleviates workers’ boredom (and risk of depression) as they often have to wait months or years for case resolution.

The programme keeps them active and builds social rapport. As much as injured workers need medical care, they also need this kind of support for their psychological wellbeing. TWC2 directs a bit of funding to Discover Singapore for their programmes while the team leading this project also sources for direct support from donors for specific activities.

On Sundays, the DaySpace is given over to two affiliated groups of domestic workers for them to conduct classes. They are the Indonesian Family Network and the Filipino Family Network. TWC2 also helps support their activities with a bit of funding, which comes under the category of ‘Enrichment activities’.

On Sunday evenings, the DaySpace is given over to the Migrant Workers Band so that they have a place to rehearse.

Informing workers that assistance is available from TWC2 is a core activity, which we conduct one Sunday a month at different parts of Singapore where migrant workers congregate on their day off.

For this we rely mostly on our social workers and volunteers, but expenses are incurred printing pamphlets and other literature (in over ten languages). To transport the materials to the distribution point also costs a bit of money.

The above projects do not comprehensively cover injured and salary-unpaid workers needs. Miscellaneous direct benefits include:

  • buying an air ticket for a worker stranded in Singapore, with no employer responsible for repatriation;
  • helping a worker pay a fee to obtain copies of his hospital records, without which his injury compensation claim is stuck;
  • defraying the cost of disbursements when a worker has a worthy court case and is assisted by a probono lawyer;
  • helping a worker pay for forensic analysis to prove that salary vouchers tendered by an employer in court are forgeries.

The amounts involved are relatively small, but they are mentioned here to illustrate the variety of emergencies TWC2 has to help with.

Delivery of the above direct services does not come without administrative cost. We need a General Manager and an Administration Officer to coordinate donations and volunteers. There are also office and stationery expenses, printing costs, computers, wifi and communication costs, etc, without which social work or the delivery of assistance cannot be realised.

Providing direct help to workers in need is not the sum total of TWC2’s mission. An equally important goal is to cure the defects in regulations and social attitudes that cause the inequities we see afflicting foreign workers. To this end, TWC2 conducts a range of advocacy activities, chiefly:

  • Research;
  • Communication with the public via website and social media;
  • Engagement with media;
  • Engagement with interested members of the public, including talks given to school or college groups, and with policy-makers

The above naturally come with incidental expenses even if the main part of the work is done by volunteers.