How to Verify a Nepal Donation Appeal Before You Give

A Nepal donation appeal usually arrives as a story with a payment link at the end. The flood, the landslide, the school with no roof: the problem in the story is often real. What the story almost never tells you is who is collecting, whose bank account the money reaches, and whether anyone outside the organisation is watching it move.

So here is a donor-side procedure. It is written for someone in Kathmandu or in Chicago who wants to check an appeal before sending, using the official bodies' own websites. Nothing below is a verdict on any organisation. These are checks you run yourself, and most of them take minutes.

Start with the organisation, not the appeal

Plenty of groups raising money for work in Nepal hold some kind of official status, but the statuses are not the same and they are not issued by the same office.

NGOs that receive foreign funding, and international NGOs operating in the country, are affiliated with the Social Welfare Council. The Council publishes a list of its affiliates on its own site, usually labelled something close to 'affiliated organisations' or 'affiliated NGOs/INGOs'. Open that page on the Council's website rather than trusting a screenshot pasted into an appeal.

One caution before you treat absence from that list as a warning sign. A Nepali NGO registered locally and funded from inside the country may never have needed affiliation at all, so it can be completely legitimate and still not appear. Affiliations are renewed on a cycle and the published list is updated at intervals, which means a name can also be missing on the day you look for dull administrative reasons. Note the date of the version you are reading. If the organisation should be on that list and is not, ask it why, and check its DAO registration in the meantime.

Most local organisations register with the District Administration Office for the district where they work. DAO registration and SWC affiliation are separate things, and neither one is a quality rating. All they tell you is that an organisation exists on paper and which office is supposed to be keeping an eye on it.

Then the boring part. Take the name exactly as it appears on the registration record and compare it word by word with the name printed on the appeal. Watch for a personal name where an organisation name should be, or a small spelling difference that quietly splits one entity into two.

Follow the money: PAN, account name, where it lands

Organisations registered for tax in Nepal hold a PAN issued by the Inland Revenue Department. For a donor the PAN matters for a simpler reason than tax: it is a fixed identifier that should line up with the name on the bank account collecting the donations. The IRD's site carries a taxpayer search, labelled along the lines of 'Taxpayer Search' or 'PAN Verification', where you can enter a PAN or a name. Search the organisation's own name and see what comes back.

Then ask, directly, which bank account the funds go into and who holds it. Compare that holder name with the name on the registration record. An account in the name of a staff member, a founder, a relative abroad or a collecting agent deserves a second question even when the explanation turns out to be innocent. Sometimes it is: small organisations do odd things for practical reasons. Ask anyway.

Sending from outside Nepal makes the chain longer than one transfer. Money may pass through a remittance operator or a payment platform before it reaches a Nepali account. Ask which entity receives it at the Nepal end and what name sits on that account. If the answer differs between the appeal page, the email reply and the payment instructions, stop and start again.

Check the channel the appeal claims to use

During a district-level response, money is sometimes routed through an account connected to the District Administration Office or to a district disaster management committee rather than a private organisation. National appeals may run through a government body or a recognised humanitarian agency. The arrangement varies by district and by fund, and there is no single rule to memorise.

Which is why you confirm it with the office itself. If an appeal says it is working with a district office, phone or visit that DAO and ask whether the account is theirs and whether the appeal is known to them. Same for a national body: go to its own site or office and read its published relief or donation information. A forwarded message, a poster, a screenshot of a news clip. None of that is confirmation. If you cannot find anything at the source, that is information too.

Mismatches worth pausing on

None of these proves wrongdoing. Each is a visible mismatch, and each is a reason to slow down and ask a question rather than an excuse to accuse anyone.

• The account holder name does not match the organisation name on its registration record.
• The appeal names an organisation but gives no registration or affiliation reference you can look up.
• The payment link points to a personal wallet or a personal account rather than one held in the organisation's name.
• The payment details change after you ask a clarifying question.
• No one will say which office, committee or agency the organisation is coordinating with.
• The organisation cannot or will not say what a donor gets afterwards: a receipt, a spending summary, a report.
• The appeal leans on a deadline that closes before anyone could reasonably check it.

If something looks wrong, this is where to take it

Pausing is not the last step, and it should not be. If you have already sent money, contact your bank or payment platform first, because a transfer recall gets harder with every hour. Card payments and some platforms have dispute routes. Use them.

Inside Nepal, suspected online fraud is reported to Nepal Police, which runs a Cyber Bureau for online financial crime; you can go through your nearest police office or the Bureau. For an organisation affiliated with the Social Welfare Council, a complaint can also go to the Council, since it is the body that oversees its affiliates. If the appeal claims a district office's account, tell that DAO. And if you are abroad, your own country's consumer or fraud reporting service is worth a call as well, because it can act on the payment side where you are.

The twenty-minute check for a Nepal donation appeal

Here is the whole thing in one run-through, for anyone who skimmed the sections above. Print it, or keep it open in another tab while you work.

1. Match the names. The organisation name on the appeal against the name on its registration record, word for word.
2. Look it up on the Social Welfare Council list. Open the Council's own affiliated-organisations page and note the date of the version you are reading. Absent and it takes foreign funds? Ask why.
3. Confirm DAO registration with the District Administration Office for the district it works in. If a district office or committee is named as a channel, ring that DAO and ask.
4. Search the PAN on the IRD taxpayer search, then ask for the bank account holder's name and compare it with the registration name.
5. Confirm the channel with the channel. The district office, agency or platform should say the same thing the appeal says.
6. Ask for it in writing. A receipt, a spending summary, a report afterwards. Keep the email, and note the date you ran these checks.

What these checks do not guarantee

Registration and affiliation confirm that an organisation exists and appears on someone's list. They do not confirm that a particular programme is well designed, that a budget is realistic, or that money will be spent the way an appeal describes. Following every step above cuts down the chance of sending money to the wrong account. It does not remove the risk of a donation being used badly, and no procedure can.

What it does give you is a decision you made deliberately, with a record of what you checked and when.

Editor's note: the steps above were checked against the official websites on 17 October 2026. Page labels, lists, fees and account details all change, so read them off the responsible body's own site on the day you check, and trust that reading over anything on this page.