Transparency

Where the money goes

Openness is how Build & Learn Africa honours your trust. This page explains what your gift pays for, how projects are verified, and where to go when something doesn’t look right.

What your gift pays for

Some platforms claim that “100% goes to projects” while covering their costs in ways donors never see. We won’t do that. Running a trustworthy platform — verifying churches, inspecting milestones, processing payments, answering your emails — genuinely costs money, and your gift funds both the project work and the protections around it:

Project costs

The bricks, cement, roofing, desks, books, teacher support and everything else in each project's published budget. Always the largest share of what we spend.

Verification & oversight

Checking applications, inspecting milestones before funds are released, and collecting the photographic and financial evidence published on project pages.

Administration

The people and systems that run the platform: donor support, accounting, safeguarding and the technology you are using right now.

Payment processing

Fees charged by the payment processor on each card, mobile money or bank transaction. We negotiate these down but cannot make them disappear.

The audited split between these categories will be published in the financial reports section below — real figures from real accounts, never marketing estimates.

Verified Project badge

How we verify projects

No project can receive a single donation until it has passed verification. The badge you see on project cards means all of the following checks were completed:

Registration documents — the church or school is a registered entity in its country, with documents checked against official records where available.
Land and tenure — the congregation has documented rights to build on the land, so a finished building cannot be lost to a dispute.
Leadership references — references for project leadership, and confirmation of the community’s own contribution of land, labour or funds.

Safeguarding

Child protection comes before fundraising. We never run a public marketplace of individual children — education support is pooled across cohorts. Photographs and stories involving children are published only with documented guardian consent recorded in a consent registry, and consent can be withdrawn at any time.

Read the full safeguarding commitments

Financial reports

Audited accounts will be published here

As each financial year closes and the independent audit completes, the full accounts — including the split between project costs, oversight, administration and payment processing — will appear on this page for anyone to download.

Complaints & whistleblowing

Something doesn’t look right?

If you believe funds have been misused, a project misrepresented, or anyone connected to the platform has acted improperly, we want to hear about it — including anonymously. Every report is acknowledged, investigated and answered, and reporters are protected from retaliation.

Write to giving@buildlearnafrica.org marked “Complaint”, or use the contact form. [Configure: independent whistleblowing channel — set before launch]

Our policies in full