Erin Wilson 
There is a growing trend in the non-profit world that troubles us.
When hiring new people, their contracts may include “nondisclosure language” for services between nonprofits. In essence, they make it legally possible to avoid being transparent with donors!
“Hiding basic information about international grants and distributions has unfortunately become part of the culture of the nonprofit field,” said Daniel Borochoff, president of the watchdog group CharityWatch.
We believe transparency is an essential part of our work and organizational culture—we can’t wait to share what we’re doing with you around the world! Here are few of the ways we put it into practice:
Financial Transparency
This is the easiest kind of transparency to talk about, so let’s start here. To be clear, we never sign non-disclosure agreements. It would be impossible to serve well if we hid partner relationships, and it certainly doesn’t foster an environment of trust, which is essential to building peace.
Our financial audits are easy to find on our website. If you go to the ‘About Us’ tab on our website and click on ‘Our Finances’, you can access past Annual Reports, IRS filings, and audits.
Why make this information so easy to access? Because trust is that important to us!
Organizational Transparency
We welcome your questions—we receive all kinds! If you have ever received a call from our Donor Relations team, you know that we are completely open to talking through your questions. If questions can’t be answered right there on the phone, we find out the answers you need.
Questions that arrive through the mail, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are answered as quickly as we can.
From the beginning, we’ve worked hard as an organization to continually learn as we go. Our annual Failure Reports (the most recent edition will be posted here soon) are an honest accounting of the areas we commit to improve.
Local Transparency
We partner with medical teams and local organizations that have great reputations, experience, and responsive reporting structures. Groups like IHAO are from the local community, serving the community, have already built trust, and are accountable to local families.
You may have noticed special bags used during emergency relief drops. Food bags are clearly marked with our name. Why? It’s not advertising, it’s accountability. The recipients of emergency relief aid know they can trust the food (there won’t be expired or spoiled food in the delivery) because we stand behind it. In cities like Haditha, where you provided emergency food supplies via military cargo plane, we coordinated with trusted local contacts, but we don’t have staff living in Haditha. Small details like marked bags provide extra accountability with local leaders.
We live here. We don’t fly in because of a crisis and fly out when the news coverage moves on. We can only go where others won’t because we work hard to establish trust in person, over tea.
Emotional Transparency
Going where others won’t, serving those others won’t—sometimes it’s really hard! In order to wage peace well, we need to share hard moments as well as joyful ones.
We are devastated when we lose a young heart patient. The children we serve are very sick, and every surgery takes risk. Despite having some of the best pediatric heart doctors and nurses in the world, not every child makes it. We walk through those losses together—bear the emotional cost together.
Why spend so much time talking about transparency? Because peace requires it. Because being peacemakers isn’t just a tagline. Because you mean the world to us.
Because we’re in this together—this only works if we’re in it together!
