Every organization on Yendaa has been reviewed before a single dollar reached them.
That sentence should be unremarkable. In a well-functioning philanthropic ecosystem, vetting would be the baseline — the minimum expectation before any platform connects donors to recipients. But in international giving, particularly giving directed at Africa, it has historically been the exception. Organizations appear on crowdfunding platforms with little more than a name and a bank account. Donors give. Money moves. And the question of whether it arrived, what it bought, and who was accountable for it often goes unanswered.
Yendaa exists because we think that’s unacceptable — and because we’ve built the infrastructure to do something about it.
Here is exactly how that infrastructure works.
Who Reviews Organizations on Yendaa
Yendaa is the fundraising platform of Give To Africa, a U.S.-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in San Diego. Every organization seeking to list a campaign on Yendaa goes through a review process conducted by Give To Africa’s team — not an algorithm, not an automated form, but people who read the applications, ask follow-up questions, and make judgment calls.
Give To Africa’s Global Ambassador Council — a body of thought leaders spanning business, academia, government, the arts, and the nonprofit sector across multiple continents — provides an additional layer of advisory oversight on the organizations and initiatives we support. When a project is complex, sector-specific, or operates in a region we’re less familiar with, we consult the people who know it best.
This is not a rubber stamp. Organizations have been declined.
What We Look At
The vetting process evaluates organizations across four areas:
1. Legal and organizational legitimacy
We verify that the organization is formally registered — with its national government, a recognized NGO regulatory body, or an equivalent legal structure in its country of operation. We check that it has governance infrastructure: a board, defined leadership, and basic financial oversight. An organization run entirely by one person with no accountability structure is not eligible for listing, regardless of how compelling its mission is.
2. Mission clarity and community rootedness
We ask organizations to describe what they do in specific, concrete terms — not in the language of grant applications, but in the language of what actually happens on the ground. Who do they serve? In which specific community or region? What does a typical week of their work look like? We are looking for organizations that are embedded in the communities they serve, not parachuted into them. Local leadership is not a preference — it is a requirement.
3. Financial accountability
We do not require audited financials from every organization — many of the most effective grassroots nonprofits in Africa operate on budgets too small to justify a formal audit. What we do require is evidence that the organization tracks its finances, can account for how past funds were used, and has a coherent plan for how campaign funds will be deployed. Organizations that cannot explain what they did with previous funding are not listed.
4. Alignment with Give To Africa’s model
This is the most qualitative part of the process, and arguably the most important. Yendaa is not a neutral platform — it reflects Give To Africa’s belief that effective giving builds local capacity rather than creating dependency, that African-led organizations are best positioned to understand and address African community needs, and that transparency is a non-negotiable condition of donor trust. Organizations whose model contradicts these principles — regardless of how legitimate they are — are not the right fit for Yendaa.
Learn How to Get Verified on Yendaa
What Happens After Listing
Vetting is not a one-time event. Once an organization is listed, the relationship with Give To Africa continues.
Campaign updates are expected on a regular basis — donors who have given to a campaign should hear from the organization. When a campaign closes, Give To Africa follows up with the organization on how funds were used. Impact reports are published on the Give To Africa website and shared with the donor community.
Organizations that go silent after receiving funds, that fail to provide updates, or that cannot account for campaign proceeds are removed from the platform. This has happened. It will happen again when necessary.
The security infrastructure of the new Yendaa platform has also been substantially upgraded from its predecessor. The previous platform experienced attempts by bad actors to exploit the donation and refund process — a vulnerability that is unfortunately common across crowdfunding platforms. The new Yendaa has been rebuilt with stronger fraud prevention, more rigorous identity verification, and clearer protocols for flagging suspicious activity. If you encounter anything that concerns you on the platform, there is a reporting mechanism — use it.
What Vetting Cannot Guarantee
We want to be honest about the limits of this process.
Vetting reduces risk — it does not eliminate it. Give To Africa reviews organizations based on the information available to us, the judgment of our team, and the counsel of our advisors. We are not omniscient. An organization that presents well during the vetting process can still underperform, mismanage funds, or change direction after listing. We do everything we can to detect and respond to these situations — but we cannot promise they will never occur.
What we can promise is that when something goes wrong, we respond. We investigate. We communicate with donors. We remove organizations that violate the trust the platform is built on. And we publish what we learn so that the process gets better over time.
That commitment to accountability — not perfection, but transparency about imperfection — is what distinguishes Yendaa from a platform that vets nothing and a platform that claims to vet everything without showing its work.
For Organizations Considering Yendaa
If you represent an African nonprofit and are reading this to understand what listing on Yendaa requires: the process is designed to be rigorous but not punishing. We are not looking for organizations that have everything figured out. We are looking for organizations that are honest about what they do, accountable to the communities they serve, and willing to maintain that accountability to Yendaa’s donor community.
The vetting process is also an opportunity. Organizations that go through it and list on Yendaa gain access to Give To Africa’s U.S.-based 501(c)(3) infrastructure, tax-deductible donation status for their donors, and visibility to a global donor community that specifically seeks out vetted, locally led African nonprofits. That is worth something — and it is worth the process required to get there.
If your organization is doing the kind of work described in this post, we want to hear from you.
Begin the application process →
For Donors
Every campaign you see on Yendaa has passed this process. That is not a guarantee of perfection — as we said above — but it is a meaningful signal of legitimacy and accountability that most international giving platforms cannot offer.
If you want to understand more about the philosophy behind how Give To Africa and Yendaa think about giving — why the model matters as much as the money — the Beyond Charity series on the Give To Africa blog is the place to start.
Read the Beyond Charity series on GiveToAfrica.org →
Browse verified causes on Yendaa →
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