Merciful Group exists to help people facing hardship. Its supporters have also entrusted it with something less visible: the responsibility to account for money raised in their name. That responsibility matters to donors, to the people receiving assistance and to any financial institution asked to support the charity’s work.
Merciful Group is listed on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Charity Register. The register provides a public starting point for information about the organisation and its annual reporting. It allows anyone considering a relationship with the charity to look beyond a campaign or a social media post and examine its formal record.
Questions deserve useful answers
A public listing cannot, by itself, explain every payment or every fundraising event. Merciful Group’s activities have included appeals connected with overseas humanitarian needs and direct support for families in Sydney. Each kind of work has its own practical questions: how an appeal was organised, what a payment funded, who received it and what evidence remains after assistance was delivered.
Those are reasonable questions. We believe an organisation asking the community to trust it should be ready to explain its activities in terms that a donor, adviser or bank can test. Where records require context, that context should be supplied. Where a question identifies a gap in an explanation, the answer should be clearer the next time.
A commitment to open engagement
Merciful Group’s president, Rabih Chamma, has spoken publicly about the charity’s work, including its response to families arriving from Gaza in 2023. Independent reporting provides a view of that work from outside the organisation. Formal financial and operational information provides a different, equally important view. Neither should be treated as a substitute for the other.
We welcome careful engagement with professional partners who want to understand how humanitarian assistance is funded and delivered. The strongest basis for that relationship is a clear account of the work, supported by relevant documents and a willingness to answer follow-up questions.