Where Your Dollars Went
2024
In 2024, 92.3 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. 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 2024. 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 2024, we spent about $17,000 (1.6% of total expenditure) on a fundraising activity in December 2024.
Cost of charitable activities
This category forms the bulk of our 2024 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 What we do section of this website has more information about each of the various activities or programmes. They are:
The term Charitable activities also includes the cost of communications, outreach, research and advocacy. 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 2024, we spent about $992,000 on charitable activities, or 91.9% 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 2024, we spent about $65,000, or 6.1% of total expenditure, on these functions.
SIGNIFICANT CHANGES FROM PREVIOUS YEAR
Whereas in 2023, we held a number of large-scale events, in 2024, we decided to hold smaller-scale ones so that migrant workers coming to these events would have more interaction time with our case officers and volunteers. This lowered the expenditure on Outreach in 2024 by about 22%.
The demands on medical assistance (a part of the CareFund) can vary hugely from one year to the next. It all depends on whether any worker presents himself with a need for medical treatment in the absence of any employer support. Sometimes, the cost of treatment can be high. TWC2 exhausts all possibilities for getting employer support before we step in, especially since, for Work Permit holders, the law is clear that employers are responsible. In 2024, we were extremely successful in ensuring that employers did not shirk their responsibilities. As a result, our expenditure on medical support fell by over 90% compared to 2023.
Expenditure on FareGo fell by 52% compared to 2023. Early in 2024 we felt that our eligibility criteria for transport subsidies were a bit too loose, leading to surge in 2023. We tightened up to ensure that FareGo expenditure came back to historical trends.
Our annual spending on Legal support is usually low since TWC2 enjoys much valuable pro-bono support from lawyers. This fund is used to help workers with incidental costs such as court fees and the costs of organising and submitting evidence. In 2023, we had to put up a Security for Costs on behalf of a worker. In 2024, the court found in the worker’s favour and the Security for Costs was returned to us. The amount being bigger than our total Legal support expenditure for the whole year, the nett figure for 2024 became a negative $4,919.
CareFund General is the term we use for miscellaneous direct assistance to workers other than the above-named programmes. This includes subsidies to help out-of-work workers with their dataplan expenses or the airfare home (when the employer is not obliged to pay). However, in 2023, we received a large donation to assist workers who have deserving salary cases, but for lack of good evidence did not succeed at the Tribunal. TWC2 has many articles on this website about how unfair it is that employers control the evidence such as time cards and pay slips and yet it is workers who have to bear the burden of proof in a salary claim. We dispensed this donation as intended, causing a steep increase in CareFund General expenses in 2023. This donation was mostly exhausted in 2024 and we discontinued such assistance. That is why our expenditure on CareFund General in 2024 was 50% less than 2023.
A Communications Officer joined TWC2 in 2024 to boost our capability for outreach and advocacy. Consequently, our expenditure in the category Advocacy, Communications and Administrative Support increased by 30% over 2023.