Questions & answers
What characterizes your NGO?
Ecos de Mali ("Mali's echoes") is a small NGO that has the will to remain small in order to develop very concrete projects with the greatest efficiency and the lowest possible costs.
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Being a small NGO allows us to have almost no infrastructure costs and to concentrate all our effort and the founding we receive on what really matters, which are our projects in Mali.
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Our projects are concrete, viable, limited, agreed with their beneficiaries, and managed and audited with business criteria. We are pragmatic. We do not get lost in indefinite or utopian projects.
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All this means that those who collaborate with Ecos de Mali can be sure that they are directly helping the Malian people. Your collaboration or your money, however little, will not be lost halfway.
What part of my donation will you allocate to your expenses, trips to Mali, etc.?
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Zero. We will allocate your donation entirely to development projects. Being a small NGO allows us to operate with very few expenses (see the following answer). The expenses that we have are not financed by donations, but by the founding partners and occasionally with extraordinary income that we occasionally get by other means (such as subsidies).
What operating costs do you have?
Very few:
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The expenses of the trips to Mali (air tickets, stay...), which are mainly financed by the founders. Occasionally these expenses can be supplemented with extraordinary income.
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We do not have any rented premises. The meetings are held at a private address.
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Financial management is carried out by a professional volunteer who does not charge anything to manage bank direct debits, tax and accounting issues, etc. The bank does not charge us commissions either.
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We are audited by an independent professional who does not charge us anything.
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We have made this website ourselves, we have not paid any company or external professional to do it. The legal text has been written by our collaborating lawyer who didn't charge anything for this task, and the logo was created by our professional designer who also did not charge anything.
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We have virtually no infrastructure costs. To keep the website running we pay an annual fee to a hosting service, like any other website.
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Our computer infrastructure is based entirely on cloud services that are free (except the web). We use Google Apps for email, share and sync files, share the calendar, etc. (we are subscribed to the Google program for non-profit organizations). We manage the newsletter and its subscribers with MailChimp, etc.
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We do not have own computers of the NGO. Volunteers use our personal computer and if something is damaged, even if it is a key, we pay it out of our pocket.
If I make a donation from the website, does any fee apply?
To accept donations on our website we use the PayPal payment system. PayPal charges a small fee for each donation, whether you make the payment by credit or debit card, or if you pay using your PayPal balance. For example, for a donation of 10 eur, PayPal charges 0.54 cents. For a donation of 100 eur, PayPal charges 2.25 euros. Being an NGO, the fee applied to us is the lowest, but still there is. The fee will not be charged to your account, but will be deducted from the amount we will receive.
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You can also make your donation with a bank transfer. In this case, your bank can charge a fee to you for making the transfer.
Can I deduct my donation in my income statement? (Spain only)
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Yes. Since January 2016, Ecos de Mali is registered in the Register of Non-Governmental Organizations for Development of the Generalitat de Catalunya, so all donations we receive can be subject to deduction from your income tax.
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In order to send you a proof of your donation, we need your personal information: full name, DNI number, and tax address. The first time you make a donation, send us an email to info@ecosdemali.org indicating that you have made a donation, and attaching the above data.
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During the month of February of the following year (the year in which you can deduct your donation in your income tax return), we will send you by email the receipt of your donation(s).
Why is the website not fully translated into English and other languages?
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We do not pay anyone to maintain the web. The collaborators voluntarily do it in our free time. Keeping the full web up-to-date in multiple languages would imply an effort that we cannot afford.
I don't receive your newsletter, or I receive it as spam
If you are subscribed to our newsletter, we recommend that you add the address info@ecosdemali.org to the address book of your email application, to ensure that you will receive our messages correctly.
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If your email application also has the possibility to indicate a list of trusted addresses (in Hotmail they are called secure senders), also add the address info@ecosdemali.org to that list.
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If your email application still filters our messages as spam, tell it that they are not spam. If you have doubts about how to do it, get in touch with us and we will help you.
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If you use Gmail, you will likely receive our messages in the "Promotions" or "Notifications" tab.
