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Funding Policy

Aid Watch Palestine was initiated because international aid to Palestine has long been problematic for political and administrative reasons. These are among the problems that Aid Watch Palestine seeks to address. They are posing challenges that we anticipate facing ourselves as we seek financing to run Aid Watch Palestine.

Self-funding is the best way to protect our objectivity, but since the availability and accessibility of self-funding would limit the speed and scope of our work, we have decided to pursue both internal, self-funding and external funding. We aim to mitigate the potential risks to our independence by articulating limits and conditions on the types of funding that can be accepted and by being explicit about the situations that would signal a need to reject or return funding.

We recognize that Aid Watch Palestine’s credibility as a transparency and accountability initiative requires us to model transparency and accountability. Therefore, we are publicizing our funding policy for comments from all interested parties, and we will adjust the policies as needed to ensure that we act as ethically as possible in our very complex and distorted political/economic context.

Guiding Policies

  • Aid Watch Palestine will not pursue or accept funding that comes with pressure to take a particular political stance or to increase or decrease scrutiny of any aid actor or that restricts the kind of aid monitoring AWP can do.
  • If we experience coercive pressure from a donor, and if the conflict cannot be resolved quickly, AWP will initiate efforts to return the funds, mitigating the negative impact on staff and activities as much as possible, and the decision and implementation of the decision will be documented in public reports.
  • Funding will not be pursued or accepted from parties that are widely considered by the Palestinian community as undermining Palestinian rights.
  • We will not sign any contractual clauses that obligate us to enforce a foreign government’s anti-terrorism policy on our own people or that requires us to limit community participation on the basis of political affiliation alone.
  • Funding will not be pursued or accepted from parties that require purchasing materials or services from Israel or a donor country.
  • All funding for Aid Watch Palestine must be legal, transparent, and professional.  We will not accept anonymous contributions in excess of $1,000.
  • We do not knowingly accept contributions from anyone who stands to benefit financially from our work.
  • Aid Watch Palestine will not accept any non-cash gifts that are counter to or outside the scope of its mission and purpose, unless the item would produce needed revenue.
  • In order to maintain stability and independence, Aid Watch Palestine strives to maintain a diversity of funding sources and to avoid being more than 25% dependent on any one donor.
  • All grants or contributions will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the Steering Committee of Aid Watch Palestine and when necessary legal advice will be obtained.
  • Aid Watch Palestine will carry out regular internal audits and annual external audits.
  • All funding reports will be presented in Arabic and English online within one month of submission.