FOR PATIENT'S SAKE,BE OPEN

STUDYING at St Anthony’s Convent in the 1970s was an enriching experience for me. There was no compulsory Community Involvement Project (CIP) and there was an Extra Curricular Activities (ECA) club, the St Vincent de Paul Society, whose members did not get ECA
points for entry to pre-university education.I remember how the nuns and students of the society toiled to pack biscuits, rice and other food and once a month, old men and women from Chinatown would troop by for these packages.

Once, we asked a nun, Sister Janet, why we did not give them money to buy their own provisions. She explained that they were so concerned with saving money for their coffins that they would rather starve than use the money.

To the nuns, a charity was never a business organisation and the head of a religious congregation would never think of himself or herself as a CEO who earned a 10-month bonus and travelled first-class.In fact, the nun’s teaching salaries were returned to the convent. I once saw a nun agonise over buying a pair of shoes as she felt she was being ostentatious.

As a teenager, I was awed by these beautiful women who had the courage to take the vow of poverty and to serve the poor and disadvantaged.

We were inspired to do charity work out of a sense of duty and a desire to help, not to fulfil the CIP requirement or earn ECA points.

Over the years, I have become concerned
with the way charities raise funds. Viewers are often asked to SMS in to win a car or a condo.
The sense that they are contributing to charity is absent. Teenagers sometimes ask me to donate to charities not under the umbrella of the Community Chest, and after looking into the matter, I have discovered that up to two-thirds of the funds I give go to operating or administrative
costs.

It has become fashionable and even profitable to run a charity as a business. My first reaction, when I heard how much the CEO of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) was earning, was to stop donating to the NKF. I was angry that the spirit of charity seemed to have been debased to
fit a business model. I asked myself, why the performance bonus? Is there a link between the amount of funds raised and the bonuses paid to the CEO and staff?

But on deeper reflection, I worried that this would be everyone’s reaction. I began to worry about kidney patients, who can now extend their lives by 20 years or more through kidney dialysis.

In April last year, TODAY reported that the NKF projected a need for $624 million to care for its existing 2,000 patients over the next 10 years — not taking into account the estimated 400 new kidney patients each year.

The NKF must manage this public reaction for the sake of those patients they have worked so hard to serve. More information should be forthcoming, so that the public can make an informed judgment. In the same report, Mr Alwyn Lim, NKF executive committee vice-chairman and finance committee chairman, outlined the breakdown of each dollar donated using information collated in 2002.

He said 56 cents went to the NKF’s beneficiaries and to the administration of its programmes, 29 cents was added to the reserves and 15 cents was used to cover fund-raising expenses. However, he
did not explain how the 56 cents broke down: Did it include staff salaries, performance bonuses and travel expenses?

The NKF must be transparent and address the public’s concerns.

A court battle is simple compared to winning back the hearts and minds of Singaporeans.
For the sake of kidney patients, this other battle must be won.

This article first appeared in TODAY on 14th July 2005