Why did the Health Ministry renew the NKFs charity status?
We don’t yet have the answer to this, but whatever comes out in the next few weeks, one thing will not change: the NKF did not deserve to have its IPC status renewed. “IPC” stands for Institution of Public Character, which entitles a body to collect tax-exempt donations. Whatever excuses the Health Ministry is coming up with, people are not going to accept them easily. It’s already clear from KPMG’s report that the National Council of Social Services (NCSS) was extremely unhappy with the NKF as far back as 1999. The NCSS • felt the NKF had inflated the subsidies they said they had given to patients and spent on dialysis, • noted how staff costs had shot up by 30%, • and how a “disproportionate” amount of money had been spent on fundraising compared to patient care. [9] All these have now turned out to be true. For example, KPMG estimated that the NKF only spent about 10 cents of every dollar donated on patient care and subsidies, when previously the charity claimed it spent 52 cents. [
