My Nonprofit Reviews

UPDATE: The reaction from the Thaakat Board after reading this review was to send 2 personal emails to me, calling me, amongst other things, hateful, uncaring, selfish, ignorant and that I was "interfering" with their projects. Before adding - apparently without a sense of irony: "if you can't think of anything nice to say, stay out of it". I have also never met or had any contact of any kind with anyone called Austin, so I am unsure who has commented on my actions and intentions in a review above.
Not every experience with every organization will be positive and how an organization responds to such critical feedback speaks volumes. I have worked all over the world with various organizations, most of the time happily, and am doing so again now. Do I "hate" Thaakat? No.... Do I know, and have I worked with, other fundraising organizations that behave in a more compassionate way? Absolutely. I can only speak of my own experience; any facts can be backed up with written evidence. Opinions are my own :)

MY EXPERIENCE: I had a negative experience with Thaakat Foundation. They demanded ownership, access and full control (including private passwords!) of a website that I had set up, purely because it was about a project that they were donating to. As I had understood at the time, from the person running the project, this was a stand-alone project with several sponsors. I wasn't involved in any fundraising but the site manager asked me to help him recruit volunteers to various assignments. Initially they asked for full access to my website and social media accounts, but said they would understand if I said no. As this would have allowed them access to my private messages etc, I said "no", but said I would only post anything after discussing it with them. At this point., they demanded I remove the website, and associated social media pages, which I did. They offered no reimbursement, even though this website had cost in excess of $100 of my personal money to set up.

Thaakat Foundation, along with various other donors give money to a project in Ghana. Yet they initiated nothing and have never visited. The project grows mushrooms and has a school among other things - all initiated by someone else. I work in this sector and realize that is not that unusual with international charities if they are donating large sums, but I was unaware of Thaakat at the time. They do not even know the name of the man who initiated "their" mushroom project. (it was DONATED by a local permaculture organization, who instructed the site partner in how to use it. Thaakat neither financed nor had any input into setting it up - this is according to the people involved in the area). They have provided nothing at all in terms of practical teacher training, or sending skilled volunteers to work on projects that would reduce the long term financial dependency. They did however send a photographer who the Executive Director of Thaakat told me, would take awesome pictures for their website.

I cannot speak for their other projects but I confirm that the Ghanaian project is not run on any level by Thaakat. The mushroom growing, bee keeping and women empowerment groups are all ideas from somebody else. The project also receives big financial donations from other sources that Thaakat refuses to acknowledge.

By taking ownership of projects set up by other people in vulnerable situations, who depend on the donations and will therefore agree to any terms, Thaakat can infer that they are doing so much more than they are. As someone else said below, they appear to thrive on taking credit for the work of smaller organizations who do the real work on site. This is not that uncommon unfortunately, especially in the developing world and is something that perhaps needs to be addressed in general. However, the way that I was treated by Thaakat and the language used by them towards me both during this period (and update: since I have written this review) have shown me an organization that I really cannot recommend at all.
There are sadly, plenty of impoverished people around the world, all of whom need help as much as the next person. If you wish to donate money, I strongly recommend donating to a different charity .

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