Secretariat’s Financial Relationship with Member Centres (Sub-Grantees)

The Secretariat approaches funders with requests for core support to meet general operating costs and to support/facilitate proposal development workshops.

In the event that a funder awards a project grant to INDEPTH for a multi-centre activity, sub-grants are awarded to participating member centres based on approved budgets submitted through a contract template which is available on the website.

At the INDEPTH Secretariat a full-time Grants Administrator, a team of finance officers and a Finance and Administration manager collectively ensure that the funds transferred to the member centres are used properly and accounted for. This sometimes involves visits to the centres as internal audit/control mechanisms.  In addition the Board has endorsed the Secretariat’s policy NOT to provide funds to any centre that has an outstanding report to the Secretariat or has presented an inadequate report.  Sub-grantee member centres must provide financial statements at the end of the fiscal year.

Financial reports to INDEPTH from the member centres are submitted through a template that is available on the website and are thoroughly reviewed by the Grants Administrator and cross checked by the finance team. The reports are scheduled / aligned in a way to enable the Secretariat meet reporting deadlines to the funders.

The INDEPTH Secretariat exercises full fiduciary responsibility for the grant, reports to the funder (technical and financial) and ensures that the project grant and INDEPTH generally are subjected to annual audits by a reputable audit firm (currently Price Water House Coopers).  

Audit reports are presented by the auditors themselves at the annual general meetings to all stakeholders including funders who attend. The audited financial reports are also circulated to all funders, made available on the INDEPTH website and are also contained in the INDEPTH Annual Report of which over 500 copies are printed and widely distributed.  INDEPTH auditors may also visit the centres to review disbursement of sub-grants.

Since INDEPTH is also registered as a public charity with the United States Internal Revenue Service under Section 501(c) (3) of the United States IRS Act, the organisation has consistently filed Form 990 annually in fulfillment of the obligations of the Act.  Copies of these completed forms are available on the INDEPTH website.  For the past 3 years INDEPTH has successfully subscribed to the stringent International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS).

At the technical implementation level of the project, an INDEPTH Principal Investigator is appointed to be completely responsible for the project under the overall institutional supervision of the Executive Director and depending on the size, a project officer at the Secretariat is identified to serve as a link to the centres.