Of sponsorship fund and standing instructions

I am almost done with the back-to-school expenses of the children under our Education Sponsorship Program and the Children Education Fund for those without sponsors. Just a wee bit more to go to ensure that all their fees, workbooks, exercise books, uniforms, stationeries etc are all settled.

There may be a few more children from families assigned to other buddies who have not submitted their claims to me. I will have to wait for the respective buddies to do the necessary.

I have also sent the yearly reports on the sponsored children to their respective sponsors. Ahhh… got to send the reports early lah… otherwise how to ask for this year’s sponsorship amount, right? ;-)

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My NGO is already considering taking in a part-time staff to help out at our centre. And we’re also thinking that this part-timer may be able to help reduce our own workload. Well, for me personally, the one job that is taking up quite a bit of my time is the Sponsorship Program. I was hoping maybe somebody could help ensure that the necessary amount is disbursed to the various recipients’ bank account on time very month. But the person we are now considering for the part-time job is only coming in after office hours. So asking her to go to the bank is out of the question.

What I’ve been doing for the past year was to remit the sponsorship amount online via my personal bank account and submit the claims to my NGO at the end of each month. I need not go to the various banks to bank in the money, but still, in the midst of my day to day work, the remittances were not fixed on a certain date. And sometimes I had problems accessing the website, and so the remittances may be later than usual.

Now that my NGO has opened up a separate bank account specifically for sponsorship purposes, I thought, to make life easier for me, I’d opt for standing instructions to the bank to remit a certain fixed amount each month to the respective bank accounts of our recipients. But when I referred to the bank, the officer said they cannot do it for us because ours is an NGO where the signatories may change, and the recipients’ bank accounts are with other banks, not their bank.

Huh? I can easily do standing instructions via my personal bank account to ANY bank accounts in Malaysia. And my NGO can’t because we may change signatories? Hello? Unless and until the NGO gives instruction otherwise, the earlier instruction should be valid, shouldn’t it? The signatories wouldn’t be signing the SI based on their personal capacities, they would be legally representing the NGO!

Is every bank’s policy the same I wonder?

Aargh! Talk about making life easier! I don’t like the idea of using my personal bank account for the standing instructions. Maybe I should give them sitting instructions!!!