How Rebuilding Alliance is delivering aid in Gaza now
October 11, 2023
You asked, "When money is donated to your organization for Palestine relief:
a) what is your process for it to get to Palestine and
b) what % of dollars donated reach people in need of help?"
Similarly, we received this inquiry: How the money sent is reaching the victims when all major sources of economy have been shut down, roads closed, buildings collapsed, boycotts in effect. Also, how much admin fees does your organization take?
Rebuilding Alliance learned how to provide immediate aid during the 51 days of bombing in 2014 and we provided emergency aid accordingly during the bombings in May 2021 and May 2023. I hope my detailed reply will answer your questions. There are some remarkable stories in all this. Here is my reply:
How RA provides Aid to Palestinian Non-Governmental CBO Partners in Gaza in accordance w. US law
Oct. 11, 2023 by Donna Baranski-Walker, Founder and Exec. Director
Today, Rebuilding Alliance’s Board of Directors is convening a special meeting at my request as the Executive Director, to update the Board about the details of what RA is doing to respond to the current crisis. This meeting is primarily focusing on aid to Gaza, but the same policies extend to the West Bank. Our meeting will include the lead of RA’s Program Grants Team.
Getting started:
Rebuilding Alliance’s Program Grants Team met in a special session on Sunday (10/9) morning, with a key advisor from UNRWA and one of our 4 Palestinian Non-Governmental Community-Based Organization (CBO) Partners. The other three partners were not available because their electricity and internet were off, but we were all in touch via whatsapp.
Our contact at UNRWA is the person who first asked us to help back in 2014, and he developed the logistics for a remarkable aid effort that started with one UNRWA school in Rafah. They had 2200 people taking refuge with only the clothes on their backs, and he told us that the toilets were overflowing — he needed immediate help with hygiene supplies including simple things like toothpaste and toothbrushes. Our program would expand to 17 schools throughout the Gaza Strip, encouraging and supplementing UNRWA’s own efforts, responding to shortfalls.
What is needed:
In this first round of grantmaking our teams are racing to provide food and hygiene supplies, right now to families taking refuge with relatives.
What UNRWA needs for those taking refuge in schools includes cleaning supplies especially spray bottle cleaning disinfectant solutions to maintain hygiene in the shared latrines at the Designated Emergency Shelters (DES) even while the bombing continues. According to the UNOCHA Flash Alert #4: there are 175,486 seeking refuge in UN schools with another 90,000 seeking refuge with relatives.
In our experience disease, especially scabies, can run rampant in crowded settings.We do this on credit, without interest:
RA has solid experience delivering aid while bombs are falling. Our Gaza partners need to do that right now. Rebuilding Alliance is authorizing purchase of $2500 of supplies on credit per Non-Governmental CBO Partner just as Rebuilding Alliance and the Rachel Corrie Foundation did in 2014. I am taking-on the debt knowing that our fundraising will eventually meet these commitments – and starting small so that our Non-Governmental CBO partners can approve vendors and work out details. This will allow us to expand as more funds arrive.OFAC Review in Accordance with US Law
Usually RA asks our RA’s Non-Governmental CBO Partners to get 3 quotes for any purchase but given the emergency, we asked them to get started by working with a single vendor who will allow them to purchase on credit. Most chose the one they worked with for our large Ramadan food distribution.They shared the vendor’s name
RA has two team members use the OFAC-Analyzer software to confirm that they are not on the U.S.Treasury Department’s list, using multiple spellings
Together we confirmed that RA is in full compliance with U.S. law for purchases from each of these vendors, and we did this prior to making commitments or purchases.
Purchase despite blockade
This surprised me a lot in 2014 when our CBO partners first proposed what we now call an ‘agile emergency delivery approach’. How could we ship, when all borders are closed and bombs are falling? They explained that the stores were full -- people just didn’t have any money to buy. We needed to convince the stores that we were good for our word -- and we were. At that time, the Rachel Corrie Foundation joined us to sign promissory notes with the stores — we thought that the RCF would be more well-known that RA. Since then, stores are willing to sign directly with our non-governmental CBO partners. They know we will transfer funds as soon as we can, when banks reopen after the bombing stops.
Temporarily Restricted Funds
Donations received for particular projects are held as temporarily restricted funds to use as grants to those projects. Rebuilding Alliance will also apply unrestricted donations to priority projects as needed.
RA is using our Gaza Emergency Appeal on GlobalGiving.org as our primary source of funds for this first round of deliveries to families in the DES schools, and we are also re-opening our project, Mrs. Najah’s Kitchen: Gaza Emergency Meals in Rafah, Gaza to provide families with healthy, protein-rich hot meals.Percent of dollars that reach the people in need of help: 87%
Technically, no dollars reach the people in need of help because IRS rules and also Treasury Dept rules preclude cash grants to individuals — so we do not transfer dollars.
Our board has set 13% as the amount we can take from each donation to pay Rebuilding Alliance’s overhead including booking services.
In addition, I usually donate my salary back every month to meet payroll. Currently, RA has 3 full time staff in the US and 1 part time (Abu Munzer), and six people work with us overseas, of whom two are full time.
RA waived our overhead during Ramadan, and we often do that during emergencies as well but we really need to pay our team to be able to do this work.
How do you deliver even before the ceasefire?
When we start working with the schools, we ask for volunteers at each DES and work carefully, to assure safety. We encourage everyone to use PPE’s and avoid vehicle transportation in anything other than UN cars, and we hope the UN will let us use their marked vehicles.Are wire transfers getting through?
So far, the project grants we sent last week to each of our CBO partners successfully reached their accounts. These were small grants to pay the closing bills for the Ramadan Food project. We and our CBO partners are once again in good standing because the bills were paid in full.
Our challenge on that Ramadan project was that our team did excellent work and we distributed more food that ever before in Gaza, in the West Bank and also for Easter in the Bethlehem Area – but fundraising fell short and it took until September to pay the bills.How do you assure that money goes where we say it goes?
This is really important. We transfer directly to our CBO partners account. We sign agreements prior to each grant transfer and require receipts, photos, and evaluations with each grant. Our Grant Program team reviews this prior to starting the new project and board second signature is required for grants over $5000. Our CBO partners bank with Palestinian banks all of which are regulated by Israeli banks as stated in the Oslo Accords. Again, we go to great lengths to make sure that all RA transfers are in full compliance with U.S. law.
So in summary, even though the infrastructure is destroyed and the borders are closed, Rebuilding Alliance and our partners are able to do our work.
Donna Baranski-Walker
Founder & Executive Director, Rebuilding Alliance
Distribution of food and hygiene supplies and PPEs during May 2021 bombings in Gaza
Distribution of essential food supplies during May 2021 bombings in Gaza