Opaque charities fail to spell out work online, study finds

Half the charities enjoying tax-exempt status do not operate websites spelling out the nature of their work.

And many of them have similar-sounding names with only slight variations in the wordings, a survey conducted by social welfare lawmaker Peter Cheung Kwok-che shows.

Cheung polled 110 randomly selected charities in the fields of care for the elderly, animal welfare and environmental protection last month. Fifty-five of them do not have websites. Of the other half that do, only 10 well-known charities, including Friends of the Earth and Green Sense, provide detailed introductions to their organisations.

Cheung also said the names of charities were similar and confusing. 'Some groups' names contain words like love and charity, but they don't denote their target beneficiaries.'

The number of charities registered for tax-free status rose from 3,800 in 2003 to more than 6,000 this year. In spite of the sharp rise, they are not subject to close official scrutiny. No single agency monitors the sector's activities, and depending on what the fund-raising is for, approval for charity campaigns is vested with various government departments.

Another part of the survey involved onsite visits to nine charities in July. Five groups said they had complied with voluntary guidelines issued by the Social Welfare Department in 2004 on ease of public access to charities' financial information. But two said some revenue sources, such as investment proceeds and subsidies from international funds, were private information that should be shielded from the public.