The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) has since it began operations in 2001, invested in various systems and processes to ensure transparency and accountability in all our activities. In order to achieve the latter objective, our performance has always been subject to scrutiny by a number of internal and external stakeholders such as our donor community, our grantee partners, other Non-Governmental Organisations, employees, the media, citizens and consultants and service providers . Stakeholders want to feel confident that AWDF is effectively and ethically managed, and is yielding the desired results.
Annual audits are a key part of our accountability processes and the audit of our 2013 financial statements further affirmed our commitment to be transparent and accountable to ourselves and to our stakeholders. Financial statement audits are generally performed to confirm the validity and reliability of information as well as to provide an assessment of the effectiveness of internal control systems. The objective of annual audits is for the external auditors to give a reasonable assurance that the financial statements are true and fair and are free of material misstatements.
The AWDF financial statements for 2013, audited by KPMG has just been published. We are proud to say that this year’s audited financial statements are unique in that it is our first year of adopting the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS); which is the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) for the public entities.
The adoption of IPSAS has enhanced the transparency of our accounts due to the nature of the standards as well as additional disclosure requirements. It has also improved the comprehensiveness, quality, consistency and comparability of AWDF’s financial statements. IPSAS represents international best practice and therefore by adopting IPSAS, there is better comparability of AWDF’s financial statements with other international organisations.
Highlights of the 2013 Financial Statements
- Total revenue for the year 2013 was USD$4.26million
- Funds received from donors was USD$4.2million
- Other income from our endowment fund investments was USD$101,291
- Total expenditure for the year on grant making, other programmes and institutional costs was USD$4.2million
- Total grants awarded in our six thematic areas was USD$ 2.2million
- Our non-grant making programmes include, capacity building workshops for grantees, monitoring and evaluation, programme outreach and partnerships.
- Total non-grant making programme expenses was $1.3million
- Fundraising, communication and institutional development costs represented 15% of total expenses
By: Gertrude Bibi Annoh-Quashie, Finance Manager, AWDF
Click on the link below to view AWDF’s 2013 financial statements.
Click on the link below to view AWDF’s expenses for 2013.
I want to commend the AWDF management for publishing their audited financial statement for year 2013,great job. AWDF should also imbibe this culture of accountability and transparency among their potential grantees especially those that have been long in the NGO work to also have their books of account being audited to enhance their funding for programme implementation and resource mobilisation effort.keep on the good work of supporting women’s human and health rights issues of women & girls across the African continent. Long live AWDF, Long live African continent.
Hello Boseda , thanks for your comment. AWDF has consistently encouraged it’s grantee partners on the need to be transparent about their work and accountable to their stakeholders. We at AWDF, as part of our grant conditions, contribute towards the audit costs of our grantees. Our current policy is that for grant amounts above $20,000 we expect audit reports from our grantees. Additionally, for all grantees with an annual budget exceeding $50,000, regardless of how much they receive from AWDF, we expect an audit report from them. It is the responsibility of the grantees to share the audited information with their stakeholders as we have done. We hope that we will see more organisation’s investing in accountability to enhance their credibility, effectiveness and resource mobilization efforts.
AWDF will continue to support accountable women’s right organisation that will advance the economic, social, political health and reproductive rights of women in Africa.
I am impressed. Thank you.