Question 1

Is Innovative and Equal a legally registered organisation, and can you prove it?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Innovative and Equal is registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia under registration number MOJ: 211.171.1242074. Our registration certificate, statute (charter), and annual state filings are available on request, and summarised versions are published in our annual report. We maintain a registered legal address at 14 Petros Adamyan St, Yerevan 0010, Armenia, and our governance documents name a Board of Trustees, an Executive Director, and an independent internal auditor. Any donor, journalist, or partner organisation is welcome to request a scanned copy of our MOJ certificate before making a gift; we routinely provide this to institutional funders, diaspora unions, and due-diligence teams at partner foundations as part of standard verification. We also undergo an annual external financial audit by a licensed Armenian audit firm, and the resulting management letter and audit opinion are shared with major donors and, in summarised form, on our impact page. We believe that legal legitimacy and financial transparency are not optional extras for a nonprofit — they are the baseline condition for asking anyone to trust us with their money, and we hold ourselves to that standard consistently.

Question 2

What is the difference between restricted and unrestricted funds, and how do you use each?

Accepted Answer

Restricted funds are gifts or grants that a donor has designated for a specific programme, region, or purpose — for example, "digital literacy classes in Shirak" or "legal aid for survivors of domestic violence." We are legally and ethically bound to spend restricted funds only on the purpose specified, and our accounting system tracks every restricted grant in a separate ledger code so it can never be commingled with general operations. Unrestricted funds, by contrast, are gifts given without a designated purpose; these allow us to cover core costs that keep the organisation functioning — rent, utilities, salaries for finance and monitoring staff, audit fees, and the seed funding needed to pilot new ideas before a formal grant exists. Unrestricted giving is disproportionately valuable to small nonprofits because most institutional grants exclusively fund direct programme costs and refuse to cover overhead, which can leave organisations unable to pay the very staff who deliver the programmes. When you donate through our website or by bank transfer without specifying a project, your gift is treated as unrestricted unless you tell us otherwise in the transfer memo or a follow-up email, and we will always confirm receipt and classification in writing.

Question 3

How can diaspora Armenians and international donors send money, and are there fees or tax benefits?

Accepted Answer

We accept direct bank transfers in AMD, USD, and EUR to our organisational accounts; full IBAN and SWIFT details are provided on request by emailing horvathtamas6554@gmail.com, and we recommend diaspora donors contact us before large transfers so we can advise on the lowest-fee routing given their home bank. International wire transfers typically incur a correspondent bank fee of 15–35 USD depending on the sending country, which is deducted from the transferred amount unless the sender selects the "OUR" fee option to cover it themselves; we disclose the net amount received in every donation receipt. Armenia does not currently offer a blanket personal income tax deduction for individual charitable donations comparable to some Western jurisdictions, but corporate donors may in specific cases treat sponsorship or charitable contributions as deductible business expenses under Armenian tax code provisions — we advise corporate donors to consult their own accountant, and we issue an official donation certificate with our MOJ number and bank confirmation that can support such filings. For US-based diaspora donors seeking a domestic tax deduction, we can discuss fiscal sponsorship arrangements with partner diaspora foundations on a case-by-case basis; please contact us directly to explore whether this applies to your situation.

Question 4

How do you prevent corruption or misuse of donated funds?

Accepted Answer

We operate under a written Anti-Corruption and Procurement Policy (see our full policy at /policies/anti-corruption) that governs every stage of spending. All purchases above a defined threshold require three competing quotes, documented in a procurement file, with the winning bid selected by a committee of at least two staff plus a Board observer for larger contracts; single-source procurement is permitted only in narrow, justified circumstances and must be logged with a written rationale. Every staff member and Board member signs an annual conflict-of-interest declaration disclosing family or business ties to vendors, and anyone with a declared conflict must recuse themselves from the related decision. Cash handling is minimised: field allowances are paid by bank transfer wherever possible, and any necessary cash advances require receipts within seven days or the amount is deducted from the recipient's next salary. We maintain a confidential whistleblower channel, reachable via horvathtamas6554@gmail.com with "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line, through which staff, beneficiaries, or donors can report suspected fraud without fear of retaliation; all reports are investigated by someone outside the implicated programme, and substantiated cases are reported to the Board and, where required by law, to state authorities.

Question 5

Can I designate my donation to a specific village, family, or student, and will you report back on impact?

Accepted Answer

In most cases, no — and we want to explain why rather than simply refuse. Designating funds to a single named family or individual can create resentment among neighbours facing identical hardship, undermines the needs-based selection criteria our field staff use, and raises safeguarding concerns when a donor expects direct personal access to a beneficiary, especially a child. Instead, we offer geographic and thematic designation: you may direct a gift to a specific community (for example, "Berd, Tavush") or a specific programme stream (for example, "girls' STEM scholarships"), and our monitoring team will report back with anonymised, aggregate outcomes — number of households reached, before-and-after indicators, photographs where consent allows, and budget-versus-actual spending. For donors giving above roughly 500,000 AMD to a single designated project, we provide an individualised one-page impact letter within 90 days of project completion. We understand the emotional pull toward personal connection, and where appropriate we can share anonymised case narratives (with identifying details removed or altered) that illustrate the kind of household your gift supports, consistent with our privacy commitments described at /policies/privacy.

Question 6

Who is eligible to receive support from your programmes?

Accepted Answer

Eligibility varies by programme, but our overarching criteria prioritise vulnerability and need over any other factor: households below the national poverty line, families with a person with disability, single-parent and multi-child households, residents of border and rural communities with limited service access, women and girls facing gender-based barriers, and displaced or refugee families are given priority across all programme lines. Each programme publishes specific eligibility criteria — for example, our digital literacy classes prioritise adults over 40 and women in rural Shirak and Lori, while our legal aid clinic serves anyone regardless of income facing domestic violence, land or inheritance disputes, or documentation problems, with income-based prioritisation applied only when demand exceeds capacity. We do not discriminate on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, disability, or any other protected characteristic, and our staff are trained to apply written eligibility checklists consistently rather than personal judgement, precisely to prevent favouritism or corruption in beneficiary selection. If you are unsure whether you qualify for a specific programme, contact your nearest field office or email us directly — a member of our team will assess your situation confidentially and, where we cannot help directly, will try to refer you to another organisation or state service that can.

Question 7

How long does it take to apply and hear back, and can I apply if I already receive state benefits?

Accepted Answer

Yes — receiving state family benefits, pension, or disability allowance does not disqualify you from our programmes; in fact many of our beneficiaries also receive state support, and our services are designed to complement, not replace, the social safety net. Application timelines depend on the programme: our legal aid clinic aims to conduct an initial intake call or meeting within 5 working days of first contact, given the often time-sensitive nature of legal problems; our vocational training and digital literacy cohorts run on fixed enrolment cycles, typically opening applications 6–8 weeks before each new cohort starts twice a year, so timing your application to these windows matters; and our emergency household assistance (food, heating fuel, urgent repairs) aims to make a decision within 10 working days of a complete application, faster in genuine emergencies. You can apply by visiting your nearest field office in person, calling our main line at the number listed on our contact page, or submitting the intake form available at our office; we do not currently require every application to be submitted online, recognising that many of the people we serve have limited internet access. A caseworker will always confirm receipt of your application and give you an expected decision date in writing or verbally, whichever you prefer.

Question 8

What if I disagree with a decision — is there an appeal process?

Accepted Answer

Yes, every applicant has the right to appeal a negative or partial decision, and we take this seriously as a matter of basic fairness. If your application is declined or you receive less support than you believe you need, the caseworker who handled your file must explain the reason in plain language, either verbally or in writing on request, referencing which eligibility criterion was not met. If you disagree, you may submit a written or verbal appeal to the Programme Coordinator (not the original caseworker) within 30 days of the decision; appeals do not need to be formal documents — a short note or a conversation recorded by staff on your behalf is sufficient. The Programme Coordinator will review the original file, may request additional documentation from you, and must issue a written response within 15 working days. If you remain unsatisfied, you may escalate to the Executive Director for a final internal review, and separately, you retain the right to raise safeguarding or misconduct concerns through our confidential channel described at /policies/child-protection or to pursue the matter with relevant state authorities. We keep a written log of every appeal and its outcome, reviewed periodically by the Board to check for patterns suggesting unfair practice by any staff member or programme.

Question 9

How do you protect the privacy and safety of beneficiaries, especially children?

Accepted Answer

We treat data protection and child safeguarding as non-negotiable pillars of our work, governed by two written policies available in full at /policies/privacy and /policies/child-protection. On data: we collect only the personal information necessary to deliver and monitor a service, store paper files in locked cabinets and digital files behind password protection with restricted staff access, and never share a beneficiary's name, photograph, or story with a third party — including donors and media — without explicit, informed, and (for minors) parental or guardian consent, which can be withdrawn at any time. On child safeguarding: every staff member and volunteer who has contact with children undergoes a police clearance check before starting work, completes mandatory safeguarding training, and signs a code of conduct prohibiting being alone with a child without another adult present, physical punishment, and any form of favouritism or gift-giving that could be mistaken for grooming. We maintain a confidential reporting channel for any concern about a child's welfare, whether the concern involves our own staff, a family member, or anyone else, and any credible report is escalated to the Executive Director and, where legally required, to the relevant state child protection body within 24 hours. Photographs of children used in our communications are always accompanied by signed parental consent forms kept on file.

Question 10

Do I have to pay for any of your services, and what if a staff member asks me for money or a favour?

Accepted Answer

No. Every service we provide directly to beneficiaries — legal consultations, training courses, emergency assistance, and counselling — is entirely free of charge, without exception, and no staff member is ever authorised to request payment, gifts, or personal favours in exchange for access to services, faster processing, or a more favourable decision. This is stated explicitly in the intake materials for every programme and repeated verbally at the start of every training or consultation, precisely because we know that vulnerable people are sometimes exploited by intermediaries who falsely claim a fee is required. If any staff member, volunteer, or person claiming to represent our organisation asks you for money, a gift, sexual favours, or any other form of compensation, this is a serious violation of our Anti-Corruption Policy (/policies/anti-corruption) and our Code of Conduct, and we urge you to report it immediately through our confidential channel by emailing us directly, marking the subject "URGENT — Misconduct Report," or by speaking to any other staff member you trust. Reports can be made anonymously if you prefer, will never affect your access to our services, and are investigated by someone independent of the programme involved. We would rather lose a staff member than lose the trust of the community we exist to serve.

Question 11

What percentage of your budget goes directly to programmes versus overhead?

Accepted Answer

Across our most recent audited fiscal year, roughly four-fifths of total expenditure was allocated directly to programme delivery — staff salaries for field officers, trainers, and lawyers; training materials and equipment; direct beneficiary assistance; and monitoring activities tied to specific interventions — while the remainder covered core organisational overhead: office rent, utilities, external audit fees, insurance, governance costs, and a small central administration team. We publish this ratio, alongside a full expense breakdown by category and by programme, in our annual report, and we deliberately avoid the common trap of reclassifying legitimate overhead as "programme cost" simply to inflate the ratio, a practice that undermines sector-wide trust. We believe donors deserve an honest number rather than an impressively rounded one, and we are transparent that a healthy nonprofit needs adequate — not minimal — investment in finance, monitoring, safeguarding, and governance functions, because underfunding these functions is precisely what leads to fraud, poor-quality programmes, and safeguarding failures elsewhere in the sector. If you would like the full audited financial statements for a given year, please request them by email and we will send a PDF within a few working days.

Question 12

How do you measure and prove your impact, beyond anecdotes and photos?

Accepted Answer

Every programme is designed with a written theory of change and a small set of measurable indicators tracked from baseline through completion and, for key programmes, at a 6–12 month follow-up point to test whether gains persisted. For example, our digital literacy programme measures pre- and post-course digital skills assessments, self-reported confidence, and — critically — the percentage of graduates who report using a new digital skill (such as online banking, video calls with family abroad, or e-government services) three months after the course ends, not merely attendance numbers. Our legal aid clinic tracks case outcomes (resolved, ongoing, referred, unresolved) and client-reported satisfaction, while our agricultural extension work measures yield changes and adoption rates of recommended practices against a comparable control group of non-participating farmers where feasible. We publish aggregated results annually on our impact page, we welcome external evaluation — several of our larger grants include an independent mid-term or end-line evaluation commissioned by the donor — and we deliberately report negative or mixed results alongside successes, because a monitoring system that only ever produces good news is not a monitoring system at all, it is a marketing exercise, and we refuse to run ours that way.

Question 13

How can journalists, researchers, or students request information or interviews?

Accepted Answer

We welcome engagement from media, academic researchers, and students, and we try to respond to every serious request within 5 working days. Please email us with a clear description of your purpose (a news article, a thesis, a policy report, a classroom project), your deadline, and whether you are requesting data, a written statement, an interview with staff, or an interview with a beneficiary. Requests to interview beneficiaries require additional lead time because we must first ask the individual's consent, explain fully how the material will be used and published, and — for minors — obtain parental consent; we will never arrange a beneficiary interview without this process, regardless of deadline pressure, because protecting beneficiary dignity and safety takes precedence over media convenience, consistent with our privacy policy at /policies/privacy. For statistical or programmatic data requests, we can usually share our published annual report and impact page data immediately, while more granular or unpublished data requires internal review to ensure no individual can be identified. Academic researchers seeking a formal research partnership or access for a study should propose an ethics approval or institutional affiliation, and we are generally supportive of well-designed, ethically sound research that helps improve our sector's evidence base, including research that critically evaluates our own work.

Question 14

What happens to your organisation's assets if it were ever to close down?

Accepted Answer

Our statute, filed with the Ministry of Justice under MOJ: 211.171.1242074, includes a mandatory dissolution clause standard for Armenian nonprofit organisations: in the event of voluntary or involuntary dissolution, after settling all outstanding debts, taxes, and staff obligations, any remaining assets — funds, equipment, vehicles, office property — cannot be distributed to founders, Board members, or staff, and must instead be transferred to another registered nonprofit organisation with a similar charitable purpose, as designated by the Board at the time of dissolution or, absent such designation, as determined by relevant Armenian law governing nonprofit liquidation. This "asset lock" is a standard nonprofit governance safeguard that prevents an organisation's founders from ever personally profiting from its closure, and it applies regardless of how the organisation was originally funded, including diaspora donations, grants, or government funding. We disclose this clause openly because donors and grant-making institutions increasingly and reasonably ask about succession and closure planning as part of due diligence, and because we believe an organisation that cannot clearly answer "what happens to the money if you disappear tomorrow" has not thought seriously enough about long-term accountability to the people it serves and funds.

Question 15

Do you work with the government, and are you politically affiliated?

Accepted Answer

We are strictly non-partisan and do not endorse, fund, or campaign for any political party or candidate, and our statute explicitly prohibits political activity of this kind as a condition of our nonprofit status. That said, we do work constructively with relevant state bodies where doing so serves our beneficiaries — for example, coordinating referrals with local social service departments, participating in municipal working groups on rural development or gender-based violence response, and occasionally providing input when line ministries consult civil society on draft legislation affecting our areas of work (education, social protection, rural development, or child welfare). This engagement is technical and issue-based, not political, and we apply the same posture regardless of which party holds office nationally or locally, because our mandate is to serve the communities affected by these policies rather than any particular administration. We also accept, on a case-by-case basis and following the same anti-corruption and procurement standards described at /policies/anti-corruption, grants or co-financing from state budget lines or municipal governments for specific programmes, always disclosed in our annual report alongside private and international funding sources, so that anyone can see the full funding picture and judge our independence for themselves.

Answers for donors, beneficiaries, and anyone curious about our work

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