How to Verify a Nepal Flood Relief Donation Appeal

Nepal's monsoon runs roughly from June to September, and in most years floods or landslides push families out of their homes somewhere in the country. Within hours of the water rising, donation appeals start moving through Facebook, Viber groups and WhatsApp, usually as a poster with a QR code and an account number. Most of those appeals are genuine. Some are not, and the fake ones tend to look almost exactly like the real ones.

The useful question isn't whether an appeal is emotional. Disaster appeals are supposed to be emotional. It's whether your money can be traced to an organisation that actually exists, and whether someone can be held to account if it doesn't. Here's how to check that before you send anything, and what to do if you've already been caught out.

Who is actually asking

A genuine appeal names the organisation behind it, ideally with a district, an office address and a phone number you can call. If the post is signed by an individual "helping" a group you've never heard of, that isn't automatically fraud, but it does mean there is far less to check. Ask for the organisation's registered name, not the short name on the poster. Borrowing a well-known organisation's name and changing one word is a common trick, so read it twice.

Check the NGO against the DAO and SWC registers

NGOs in Nepal are registered with the District Administration Office (DAO) of the district where the organisation's head office sits. That is a registered address, not a work area. An NGO registered in Kathmandu can run a relief project in Sindhupalchok, Banke or anywhere else without changing its registration, so don't dismiss a real appeal just because the district on the certificate isn't the flooded district.

An organisation that receives or handles foreign funding also needs affiliation with the Social Welfare Council (SWC). So there are two things to ask for: the DAO registration details, and the SWC affiliation number if the group claims one.

Then confirm with the body itself. The SWC keeps its own list of affiliated organisations, and the DAO can tell you whether a name is registered in that district. Calling the office is more reliable than trusting a screenshot someone forwarded you. Our NGO and INGO directory for Nepal is one place to start matching names, and our explainer on SWC affiliation covers what the affiliation actually means.

Affiliation also has to be renewed, so an organisation that was properly affiliated a few years ago may not be today. Status is a live fact, not a one-time badge.

Ask for the PAN and the DAO registration number

A registered organisation normally has a Permanent Account Number issued by the Inland Revenue Department, and should be able to produce it without hesitation. If you aren't sure how that number is issued or what it looks like, we've explained the PAN number in Nepal in plain terms. If a group is collecting money at scale and gets vague when you ask for a PAN, that's a gap worth pausing on. If it's VAT-registered, it should also be able to issue you a VAT bill.

Match the donation account to the NGO, not to a person

This is the fastest check of all. If you're told to deposit into a personal bank account under someone's name, or into a personal mobile wallet, stop there. Licensed payment service providers in Nepal, among them eSewa, Khalti and IME Pay, issue merchant accounts to businesses and organisations, and those accounts carry the organisation's registered name. A wallet registered to an individual is not an organisational account, no matter what the caption says. The same goes for banks: if the appeal says "Helping Hands Nepal" and the account holder is "Sita Karki," those are two different things.

Receipts: what to ask for before you pay

Ask for an official receipt, and ask before you give if you can. It should show the organisation's name, its registration or PAN details, the date, the amount and what the money is for. Keep your bank or wallet record and the transaction ID alongside it. If whoever is collecting says a receipt isn't needed, that answer is itself information.

On tax: don't assume a flood relief donation is deductible. Ask the organisation what it issues and check with your own tax adviser rather than a Facebook comment.

Check whether the NGO has actually delivered anything before

A website, a Facebook page and a folder of screenshots prove nothing on their own. Anyone can build all three in an afternoon, and a polished donation page is not evidence that a single rupee has ever reached a flood victim. What you're looking for is a trace of the organisation outside its own channels.

• Does the site give a street address, a landline and names of people who work there, not just a contact form?
• Was the Facebook page posting months or years before this disaster, or was it created last week?
• Is there earlier relief work you can date and place, and can you find a ward office, school, local news report or another NGO that mentions them doing it?
• Do organisations already working in that district recognise the name?
• If the appeal claims a partner organisation, does that partner list them too?

None of this is conclusive either way. A brand-new but genuine local group can have no history at all, which is exactly why the registration, PAN and account checks above matter more than how professional the appeal looks.

Red flags in a Nepal flood relief donation appeal

• Extreme urgency, especially a deadline that expires within hours.
• No registration, affiliation or PAN details, or evasive answers when asked.
• Payment accepted only into personal accounts or personal mobile wallets.
• Refusal or vagueness about receipts.
• A mismatch between the name on the appeal and the name on the account.
• A social media page with nothing posted before the disaster.
• No verifiable office, no landline, no one willing to meet or take a call.
• Any request for your OTP, PIN or a "verification" of your wallet.
• Flood or landslide photos used without a source. A reverse image search often shows where the picture was first published, and it's frequently from an older disaster in another country.

Where to report a fake Nepal donation appeal

Act the same day if you can. Online financial fraud in Nepal is handled by the Cyber Bureau of Nepal Police, which takes complaints through its own channels, and you can also file a report at your nearest police station. Those two routes overlap, so use whichever you can reach fastest and keep a copy of what you filed.

What to bring, or attach, when you report:

• Screenshots of the appeal post, the profile that published it, and the whole chat, not just the last message.
• The transaction ID, the amount, the date and time, and the bank or wallet you paid from.
• The account or wallet number you paid into, plus the name on it if your app showed one.
• The phone number, Viber or WhatsApp contact that approached you.
• The link to the post, copied rather than retyped.

Report to the payment side as well. If you paid through a licensed mobile wallet or a bank transfer, tell that bank or payment service provider immediately and ask whether the receiving account can be flagged or the transfer held. Speed matters here more than anywhere else, because money that has already been cashed out is much harder to recover. Recovery is never guaranteed even in the best case, but a complaint filed the same day gives investigators something to work with. The same complaint a month later usually has far less to go on.

If your concern is about whether an organisation is properly registered rather than about money already sent, the local DAO and the SWC are the bodies to approach. Complaints about a licensed bank or payment service provider go to Nepal Rastra Bank, which supervises them. Each of these institutions publishes its own contact route on its official website or at its office counter, so start there rather than with a forwarded link or a phone number in a comment thread.

And if the appeal turns out to be real, say so. A short correction in the same group where the warning spread costs you nothing and saves a genuine local group from damage it didn't earn.

If foreign money is involved

Foreign-funded NGOs in Nepal operate under SWC affiliation, with project approval and reporting requirements attached. Those rules have been revised more than once, so the safer question is how a project is approved and who reports on it, rather than a number you half-remember. None of this is legal advice; for anything larger than a small personal donation, get proper advice.

Verification takes maybe ten minutes. That's the whole point. A genuine organisation will usually answer the questions without irritation, because it has answered them before. A small local group that is slow or defensive about paperwork isn't automatically a scam either, so give them time to find the file.

Registration rules and complaint procedures can change. Confirm current details with the SWC, DAO, Cyber Bureau or Nepal Rastra Bank before relying on them.