Its director of strategic programme development, Norazam Samah, advised donors to make sure the organisations they are donating to give specific projects they were working on.
“You should not donate to an organisation that gives a general cause, for instance just ‘Gaza relief’.
“It must be able to give you the name of the project, like it is helping to build 500 homes in a particular village. It has to be specific and how much they need from the public to support them.
“The donor can wait for a few months and ask how all the money donated was used,” she said.
“Another tip is for the organisation to stick to its mandate.
“If the organisation’s mandate is education and they go to different countries and carry out medical work, clearly something is not right there because they don’t have the expertise to do that,” she told FMT.
For example, Norazam said Mercy Malaysia’s mandate was to do medical work. Due to that, it carries out medical work overseas.
Islamic Relief Malaysia, an international relief and development charity organisation, said people should study the organisation’s annual reports before donating to charitable bodies.
Its head of services, Sharlina Adnan, said: “We believe if people want to donate towards humanitarian aid, they should do some research on the website.
“Check the annual reports to know if it is genuine,” she told FMT.
Islamic Relief Malaysia is part of the international body based in Birmingham, UK.
Sharlina said the relief group, with 45 branches worldwide, provided humanitarian aid during natural disasters.
“We focus on helping the poor.”
On Thursday, DSP Foo Wei Min, who is with the Commercial Crime Department, had told a terrorism financing forum here that police believed a lot of Malaysians were donating money to overseas charitable causes, but the money was actually being used to fund terrorist activities all over the world.
This was done through websites pleading for donations to help poor Muslim families or to support the Palestinian cause, he warned.
This was easily done as the Internet’s relative anonymity allowed terrorist groups to solicit online donations from both supporters and unsuspecting donors of charitable activities.
Malaysian Social Research Executive Director Lia Syed said an organisation’s website should have its work listed on it for all donors to see.
“It should have all the member details and annual reports. If these details are not there, people should check with Registrar of Societies (RoS) or other places to know if they are legitimate.”
She said the details of the work listed on the website will show if the organisation practised transparency in its activities and to prove to sponsors that it was genuine.