FRANCAISAction Contre la Faim - Comments
4) The financial resources
-Over ten years, from 1987 to 1997, the financial resources of ACF and the number of volunteers have nearly been multiplied by ten. But the organisation remains very dependent on public funding, something which often compels it to run its programmes according to economic viability and not only humanitarian needs. In an interview published in Libération newspaper on 7th March 2002, Sylvie Brunel thus states having “a very clear feeling that in ACF the criteria for opening and terminating a mission abroad have become purely financial. The condition which determines the length of a programme is notits usefulness but: will the institutional backers continue to finance or not this mission. Will the margin we have on such programmes be sufficient to cover the costs of the head office?”
-Despite a real effort towards financial transparency, ACF-France doesn’t seem to publish combined accounts of its sister organisations in Spain, Great-Britain and in the United States; Aid Watch could not get these figures. For a while, the Paris head office dealt with about two-thirds of the total activity of the movement. After 2002, ACF-France had a deficit and stopped to subsidize its sister organisations, which had to finance their operations completely by themselves.
