blogs

For the last few years we had offered Qurbani to Indonesia, where we have links with charities there. During Eid, almost every mosque will perform the qurbani right then and there. The distribution to eligible recipients will be done within a few minutes of slaughter, and from my experience growing up there, the meat will be cooked within hours. Quite neat and efficient. However, recently we had an enquiry about doing qurbani right here in the UK. After further research, I found the following official guidance from Defra:

 Two years after the tsunami, there will be a Remembrance Day.

I am programmer in my day job, and regularly reads feeds of programming blogs. Imagine my surprise when a post in one such blog refers to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). It turns out the the writer was making an analogy about technology adoption. And how open source can improve the adoption rate. At PortalInfaq UK we use open source extensively: this site is built on Drupal, an open source content management system, and hosted on a GNU/Linux system.

Today I went to the bank to initiate the refund process for our dodgy direct debits. That bit was easy. We are quite confident we are not going to be out of pocket.

But when I asked how to prevent such things from happening again, they couldn't tell me. They were shocked to know we are publishing our account number. What, as if no other charity doing it? Helloooo? Where have you been? Were you not one of many hundreds of thousand people donating to Pudsey?  Although I must admit I do not know whether Pudsey's account was ever defrauded in this way! For all I know, Pudsey's day job when not on telly is going to the bank asking for refunds :)

So our options now:

1. Make it a bit harder for people to donate cash using bank transfer, by going through some kind of cart/checkout scheme and emailing the bank details (like our current Qurbani campaign)
2. Be a bit more vigilant, frequently checking direct debit lists and transactions more thoroughly and just accept the inconvenience of asking for a refund if this kind of thing happens again.

For now we will choose option 1. If it happens again, I will probably shout louder and bring in the people behind the Paperless Direct Debit scam, er, scheme, and maybe do a bit of media stuff like contacting my favourite programme Moneybox, and whatever else I can think of.

Just now as I was checking our bank account, I noticed a direct debit "first payment" had gone out. What?! We're just a small operation, and no one recalled setting up any direct debits. There were as many as five dodgy direct debits setup against our bank account. I know we can get our money back and all that, but these things shouldn't happen in the first place! Yes, our bank account number is public (otherwise how would people without cards donate?), so it's easy for somebody to put in our numbers in an application for mobile phones contract (as is the case here). So here's some questions for the bank then:

• How can we prevent it happening again?
• Shouldn't there be some simple checks done when a direct debit mandate is setup?
• Can't we be notified if a direct debit is setup?

I'm going into the branch on Monday (yes, apparently banks still have buildings and not just websites ;) ) and try to find answers to all these questions. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, an akhwat said that after she asked around, she got the impression that it is better to send infaq or shadaqah to disaster victims rather than zakah, because it is feared that the organiser cannot distinguish between the rightful recipients or not.

Well, although I can understand the viewpoint, but I think it's a bit dodgy. My logic (of course I shouldn't use logics in fiqih, but hey, I'm not an expert) is that if an ibnu sabil (a wayfarer who's got trouble in accessing his means, eventhough he is actually rich) is a rightful recipient of zakah (muzakki), why can't disaster victims, whose properties and asset are clearly ripped off of them, should be questioned whether they are muzakki or not?

Clearly, I need to find out...

SAHANA | Free and Open Source Disaster Management System
Sahana is a Free and Open Source Disaster Management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves.

At PortalInfaq, disasters are one of our charitable objectives. Software projects like SAHANA helps immensely in any disaster relief situat

Last year, after the tsunami in Indonesia we decided to get more serious with PortalInfaq UK. So using the excellent guidance on the Charity Commission website, we formally created PortalInfaq UK as a trust. The next step was for this trust to have its own bank account. We already identified HSBC Treasurer Account as the ideal account. We got the forms but never really followed it through.

So this year we decided (again) to follow it up. This time we went directly to the main branch, got an appointment, and opened it then and there, without any forms. It was very quick and painless, with a small problem that the activation code e-mail for Internet Banking never came. After a couple of tries, HSBC has decided to send it via post. All the rest of the account stuff like cheque books, and welcome letters arrived safely.

The logical next step after this is to register with HMRC so we can claim Gift Aid for donations made by UK taxpayers.