Where Your Dollars Went

2023

In 2023, 92.6 percent of TWC2’s spending went towards charitable activities, benefiting our clients in a direct or relatively direct way. This high percentage is typical of most years, though the Covid-19 years had even higher figures due to vastly greater charitable spending during the peak of the pandemic. We remain proud of our frugality regarding overheads.

“Charitable activites”, Fundraising costs” and “Governance” are two of the three classifications of expenditure.

The numbers behind the table and pie chart come from the externally audited accounts for 2023. Our financial year coincides with the calendar year.

TWC2’s accounts are audited in accordance with the Charity Accounting Standard (CAS), which Singapore’s Commissioner of Charities recommends non-profit organisations 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
  • advocating for better policies concerning labour migration.

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

EXPLAINING THE CATEGORIES

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

Fundraising cost

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.

In 2023, we spent about $18,000 (1.5% of total expenditure) on a fundraising activity in December 2023.

Cost of charitable activities

This category forms the bulk of our 2023 spending. As shown in the table and pie chart above, this category can be further split by programme or purpose. Charitable activities does not mean merely the cost of the benefits (“goodies”) being given out. It must necessarily include the cost of the people doing the giving (and associated administation costs), without which there’ll be no system for eligibility decisions or safeguarding against abuse.

The term also includes the cost of communications, outreach, research – these being part of the mission of TWC2. For effective delivery of assistance to migrant workers it is important to understand what the needs and issues are (research), to inform workers what their rights are and where they can get help (outreach), and to urge systemic reform so that the shortcomings we see today are corrected for tomorrow (communications and advocacy). All these things form the totality of the charitable mission of TWC2.

In 2023, we spent close to $1,097,000 on charitiable activities, or 92.6% of total expenditure.

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;
  • audit fees;
  • bank charges;
  • a share of rent and office supplies;
  • a share of telecommunication costs;
  • the cost of holding an Annual General Meeting;
  • and whatever is needed to comply with law.

In 2023, we spent $70,000, or 5.9% of total expenditure, on these functions.

Previous years

See also

OUR VARIOUS CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES IN 2023

Casework is central  to the assistance that TWC2 provides migrant workers. Help would be incomplete if, for all the meals, transport subsidies and other welfare benefits we give out, the causes of distress are not attended to. Casework helps workers get their unpaid salaries or their medical leave wages, and access accommodation, injury compensation, etc that should be theirs under the law.

Common types of assistance provided by social workers include:

  • Calculating what their correct salaries and overtime pay should be and assiting them in filing a claim when needed;
  • Helping them organise their evidence, and prepare for their dates at tribunals and court sessions;
  • Helping workers make police reports when assaulted, confined or cheated;
  • Helping them access medical care when ill or injured, often having to overcome obstacles created by employers;
  • Ensuring they are paid their due compensation.

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

Our free meals programme, benefitting out-of-work migrant workers, is one of 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 TWC2 case officers will be available.

Informing workers about their rights and that assistance is available from TWC2 is a core activity.

Our outreach work spans both digital and physical spaces. We run active social media platforms, filled with content including short videos. We also organise physical outreach to places where migrant workers tend to congregate on their rest days.

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.

This segment “Enrichment activities” also includes financial support for our affiliated groups. The Indonesian Family Network (IFN) and the Filipino Family Network (FFN) run classes for domestic workers, while the Overseas Foreign Workers of Singapore (OFWS) and Migrants Band Singapore help with our outreach activities and are key to building communities among the migrant worker population.

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’.

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. It serves as a base for the Cuff Road Project, as an emergency shelter when workers are thrown out of dormitories with no notice, and a space were TWC2 can hold small events such as volunteer induction and school talks.

Although employers are required by law to pay for medical care, some injured workers still find difficulty getting treatment. Employers may deny responsibility or fall back on payments. Hospitals may suspend treatment if getting payment from an employer proves difficult. Although the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) does intervene if necessary, 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 workers are hit with an unrelated illness and need to see a doctor or dentist. TWC2 steps in when treatment is urgently needed.

The FareGo project provides unemployed migrant workers with transport subsidies. 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, and MOM itself requires workers to travel long distances to get their passes renewed or to attend case conferences.

Failure to show up could jeopardise their work injury claims or immigration status. Our transport subsidies provide welcome relief for an overlooked need.

We have a small programme to assist workers with the cost of housing. For the great majority of migrant workers, the law requires employers to continue providing lodgings even if their Work Permits had been cancelled. But there are workers who continue to fall through the cracks and no employer is required to provide, nor any State agency takes responsibility for. TWC2’s Project Roof steps in rather than see people sleep on the streets.

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 and fixed capacity.

While most salary and other types of cases are assisted at the casework level,  there are cases where a worker needs to use the justice system. Unfair administrative decisions may need to be appealed to the courts, the occasional unscrupulous lawyer may be overcharging, or there are torts for which there are no administrative channels for low-cost resolution, leaving only the courts as the avenue for redress. Workers may also face criminal charges and he or she needs help to mount a defence (sometimes successfully too).

TWC2 works with pro-bono lawyers to help with these cases, but there are court costs, disbursements and costs associated with the organising of evidence that have to be borne. These costs fall within this segment of Legal support.

We choose our cases for their strategic value. For example, in 2017/18, we helped Hasan Shofiqul (above left) win his claim in the High Court for overtime wages. The landmark ruling made it clear that employers cannot shirk their responsibility for paying overtime wages just by giving a worker the title of supervisor without meaningful executive authority.

The above projects do not comprehensively cover the needs of out-of-job migrant workers ith no income. Miscellaneous direct benefits include:

  • phone top-ups for workers so they can remain in contact with family and TWC2;
  • helping workers obtain bank statements and copies of his hospital records – evidence needed to progress their claims;
  • buying an air ticket for a worker stranded in Singapore, with no employer responsible for repatriation;
  • food subsidies for workers staying in dormitories whose employers do not provide meals despite legal obligation to do so (but it’s too far for these workers to access our free meals at the Cuff Road Project).

Delivery of the above direct services does not come without administrative cost. We need a General Manager and staff to coordinate outreach, donations, volunteers and delivery of services. There are also office and printing costs, computers, wifi and communication costs, etc, without which casework 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;
  • Public Engagement.

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