Non-Profit Organisations and Social Welfare Registration Process – Costing Model

The current model of welfare delivery is to use non-governmental organisations to provide welfare services. South Africa has approximately 25 000 individual welfare organisations (and 50 000 non-welfare NPOs). Government allocates about R2.3 billion to these welfare organisations, and some also raise funds from private donors. An extensive registration and monitoring regime is needed to ensure that they function as required and spend government money appropriately; the current regime costs the national and provincial departments of social welfare about R250 million. The national Department of Social Welfare has promulgated a set of regulations on the administration and monitoring of welfare services that, if fully implemented, would cost about R1.1 billion. By combining the currently separate registration processes, eliminating forced reregistration, and being more pragmatic about inspection processes (e.g. using auxiliary social workers) the study proposed savings of R614 million, and suggests that a combined budget of R427 million would be sufficient to ensure proper oversight.