Sponsorship fund / Summed from the ledger on this request

Where the money goes

Three figures, and then the arithmetic behind them. Nothing here is a total somebody typed into a page: each one is a sum over the ledger entries, taken when you loaded this page.

Gifts received: $810.00
Spent in Nepal: $227.00
Held for students: $570.96

01 / The arithmetic

Received, less fees, less what has been spent

A gift is credited to the student it was given for on the day it clears. The fee charged to move it is recorded against the same student, as its own line, so nothing is netted off quietly. What is left is what MRN is holding.

Sponsorship fund, to date

Gifts received: $810.00
Processing feesCharged by the card network, PayPal or the bank: $12.04
Spent in NepalNPR 30,967.34 at the rate used on each day of spending: $227.00
Held for named studentsGiven for a particular student, not yet spent: $570.96
General fundGiven without naming a student, and used where the need is greatest: $0.00
Held in total: $570.96

Across 6 published students. Each student's own figures are on their page.

02 / Admin cost

Minimal admin cost, which is not the same as zero

Moving money from a card in another country to a school in Sindhupalchok costs something. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either not counting or not telling you. What MRN commits to is keeping that cost small, showing it, and never taking a share of your gift as a fundraising cut.

The fee is shown, not absorbed
A card or PayPal fee is posted against the same student as the gift, as its own line. It appears in the ledger above and on the student's page. A gift by bank transfer usually carries the smallest fee, which is why the option is offered.
No percentage comes off the top
A gift given for a student is credited to that student in full, before fees. MRN does not deduct a fundraising or administration percentage from a sponsorship gift.
Unrestricted gifts are labelled
A gift given without naming a student goes to the general fund, is shown as its own figure above, and is spent where the need is greatest under the same two-person approval as everything else.

03 / The record itself

The ledger is append-only

A line in this ledger is never edited and never deleted. The database refuses both. That is what makes the figures above worth reading: they are a sum over a record that cannot be tidied up after the fact.

A mistake is corrected by posting the opposite entry against the same gift or payment. Both lines stay, so the correction is part of the record and the reason for it is stored with it.
An entry can be reversed once, by an administrator who did not create it, and a reversal cannot itself be reversed.
A payment in Nepal is requested by one staff member and approved by a different one. Without two different names the database will not accept it.
Every privileged action, including reading a staff-only document, writes a row to an audit log which is append-only in the same way.
Exchange rates are recorded per day and applied with integer arithmetic, so a figure cannot drift by rounding.

04 / Limits

What this page does not show

Two things are deliberately missing, and both of them are missing for somebody else's protection.

Donors are not named

Gifts are counted, not credited to a name. Your own giving history and receipts are in your account.

Students are not identified

Spending is itemised per student by their first name and code. Surnames, villages and schools are not published here or anywhere else on this site.

Safeguarding / Privacy / How sponsorship works