Lucius Roberts

I support @Malala since the day the Taliban shot her in the head for wanting to go to school, and I still do. So when this thread saying the Malala Fund is a racket and that Malala lives like a rockstar on girls’ money, I neither shared it nor dismissed it. I went to the filings. Every US charity files a Form 990 with the IRS, and every UK charity files accounts with the Charity Commission. These are public records that anyone can read. Here is what they say, point by point. The first charge is that the charity took in $16.48 million, spent $23.34 million, and so lost nearly $7 million. The numbers are right, but the conclusion is wrong. In the year to March 2023 the fund received over $55 million, much of it in very large gifts. Charity accounting books a promise as income in the year it is made, and the money is then spent over the following years. Net assets have come down from $57 million to $43 million because the fund is spending that windfall. A charity spending its reserves on its cause is doing its job. Hoarding them would be the scandal. The second charge is that Malala is pocketing the money. She is not. The filing lists Malala and her father Ziauddin as board members who work about one hour a week each and are paid nothing, with zero in every column. On every self-dealing question the form asks, the fund answers No: no diversion of assets, no grants to founders or family, and no business dealings with them. I have seen Malala at Annabel’s. She likes good places, and so do I. She has her own money from the Nobel, her books and her media work. Where she eats lunch is her business, and nothing in these filings connects her table to the fund. The third charge is the executive salaries. Here the critic is right, and I want to say so plainly. The chief executive in Washington received $372,000 in salary and benefits, the chief adviser $320,000, and the chief operating officer $241,000. Eighteen people were paid over $100,000. The top salary rose 27% in a year when donations fell 12%. In that same year three staff left on the same date: the communications director, the monitoring and evaluation director, and the monitoring and evaluation manager. The monitoring and evaluation team is the group whose job is to prove that the money reaches girls. You do not cut the people who measure the results while raising the pay of the people at the top. That is not fraud. It is a question of propriety, and propriety is the standard for a charity that carries a girl’s name and a bullet wound. The fourth charge is first class and private travel. The form does tick the box for first class or charter travel for officers, but it does not say who flew or why. I have chartered aircraft since 1984 and I know what they cost. Total travel for the whole organisation, 49 staff working across several countries, came to $593,836 for the year. A few long sectors on a Gulfstream would use up most of that, so this is not a fleet of private jets. The traveller may well be Malala herself, flying in a way that keeps her alive, and nobody who remembers Mingora should begrudge her that. The Islamabad hotel bill in the filing is with Hotel One, a mid-price chain, and it is the kind of bill any team on the ground runs up. Still, the fund should state who flew, why, and at what cost. A charity with nothing to hide should say so. The fifth charge is the real one: how much reaches girls. The fund calls 82% of its spending “program”, but that figure includes its own staff in Washington and London. The cash given out as grants was $13.1 million out of $22.95 million, or 57%. The fund’s own narrative says $10.2 million went to 57 outside organisations, which is about 44 cents in every dollar. And $3.49 million of the grants line went to no school at all. 1/2