When you make a donation to the Leonardo Edward Shrestha Foundation, where does that money go?
We are blessed to have 100% volunteer support right now, so every dollar donated makes it to LeosKids intact. The funds go directly to the benefit of these children and their families in the form of housing expenses, groceries, transportation, wifi access to aid in our communication with them, housing amenities and cleaning services, on top of pharmaceutical costs and medical bills.
A small portion of donations reimburses our volunteers for their transportation expenses to visit LeosKids so they can bring food, pay the bills, monitor their progress, and offer moral support.
Perhaps just as importantly, where does your donation NOT go?
Since we are supported 100% by volunteers, we don’t pay a salary to anyone involved. We are considering whether or not we should have moderately paid support in Nepal to ensure continuity of care, but we will fund that expense the same way we fund all the other administrative costs as described below.
PayPal fees and wire transfer fees – although PayPal does charge us fees to accept donations online and our bank charges us to wire funds to Nepal, we fund these fees with donations from our immediate family, our board members, and any of our extended family that wants to contribute in this way.
Website development and hosting, software development, graphic design, social media, video production and equipment, technology – all of this is provided at no cost to the foundation because our family has run a small business doing exactly this for the past 13 years, so this is part of our contribution to the foundation.
Fundraising, attorneys and accountants so far have been provided with the help of generous friends at no cost to the foundation.
It was our priority in starting this foundation to make sure no matter how large or small an amount someone could give, we wanted all of it to directly benefit the children and their families. We want each person who makes the effort to donate to these precious kids, to have the assurance that every dollar of their contribution makes it to these kids intact.
Once our online donor portal is up and running each donor will have access to see the flow of money including each of their own contributions, the transfers to Nepal with the exchange rate, and the invoices for all the expenses in Nepal.
As always, if you have any questions at all about any of this, please reach out to us via email, direct message, phone or text, and we will be happy to answer you as best we can.
We are SO grateful for each one of you! We tell you this a lot, but we could not do any of this without your help. We thank God for each one of you and the support you give to these priceless children and their families who have become a part of all of our families. We are blessed to have you all in our lives!
—: Thanks to our recent donors :—
Kamala Lama -:- Marta Crothers -:- Nawang Sherpa -:- Cody Chronister -:- Shekhar Poudel -:- Michel Bastien -:- Bidur Banjara -:- Lisa Camp -:- Manju Rai and Sunayana Limbu -:- Melina Lettsome -:- Dipesh Solanki -:-
These names are announced 1-2 weeks after the donations were made.