For years, Gospel for Asia touted membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability and claimed to adhere to the highest standards of financial integrity. In October 2015, the ECFA revoked the membership of GFA due to numerous violations of accountability and financial standards.
One of those standards is the public disclosure of a yearly audited financial statement. Recently, former GFA employee Travis Helm asked GFA for a copy of the 2014 and 2015 audit financial statements. He had (along with others) requested a copy of the 2014 statement but was refused. GFA’s representative told him that their lawyers advised them not to release the statement. More recently, Helm told me that a representative of GFA informed him that GFA would not release these documents. Here is the response from GFA:
I’m sorry but I won’t be able to send you those. Because of the lawsuit we’re quite restricted on what information we can give out.
This doesn’t seem right to me. I can’t imagine that GFA would be allowed to keep the audits from the court. I can’t see how public disclosure from a non-profit would influence the court case — unless there is something incriminating in the audits. If GFA can’t disclose what people are giving and how they spent those funds, perhaps the organization should suspend operations until the case is over.
In any case, as a potential donor to any organization, I would not donate unless I could see this information.