THE LIGUE DES DROITS DE L’HOMME

Financial years 2013 to 2018

Organisation in receipt of donations

Abstract

Being a 120-year-

old association, the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH) [

Human Rights

League

] can count on a large network of more than 8,000 volunteers spread in local sections

throughout the country. Their long-term involvement, including financial support (many are

making donations to the League in addition to the payment of their membership fees),

together with significant public subsidies, whether from the State or local authorities, have

for a long time provided the League with the means to carry out its legal, awareness-raising

and communication activities. The LDH has annual funds of approximately 2.4 million euros.

New challenges to be met

The association has been facing with new challenges in recent years. In particular, it

must confront an increased turnover in both volunteers and staff and a marked decrease in

public subsidies, at the same time that it has developed and diversified its missions to respond

to new aspects of human ri

ghts defence, such as migrants’ rights or environmental issues.

The League’s situation has been weakened, both financially and in its operation

mode.

Its operating deficit almost tripled between 2013 and 2018. Only in 2018 was there a

positive net result o

f €12,000 thanks to a large bequest. These financial difficulties stem not

so much from expenditure, which is well under control, as from the fall in resources,

membership fees and public subsidies, which have fallen by around 20% in six years.

At the same time, changes in the teams have highlighted management weaknesses. The

departure of several former employees and volunteer directors has caused the league to

suffer a loss of collective memory, due to the virtual absence of written procedures. The

associa

tion’s tight financial situation would also require stricter budgetary and financial

management, which may have long seemed superfluous. This includes, in particular, more

reliable integration of the accounts of the local sections into the accounts of the association,

for which they represent about one third of the resources and one quarter of the expenditure.

Increased rigour in organisation and management is all the more necessary as the

League for Human Rights wishes to develop public appeals for generosity as a way of

diversifying and consolidating its resources.

The handling of public appeals for generosity must be improved

Public appeals to generosity are strongly regulated by law and regulations in order to

provide donors with all the guarantees they need, and ensure they are fully and accurately

informed about the use made of their donations and bequests.

However, the procedures followed by the LDH for the management of donations and

bequests, and the drawing up of the use-of-funds statement for the

association’s resources

and the endowment fund attached to it, are not rigorous enough.

The use of the funds is certainly in line with the stated objective of the fund-raising

campaigns. This does not exempt the association from the obligation to comply with the rules

laid down both for the collection and monitoring of the funds collected and the reporting to

the public.

In particular, the League must make a declaration of appeal for donations and bequests,

even in the absence of a formal campaign, as long as this appeal appears permanently on its

website, and set up a secure management facility for tax certificates and the follow-up of

bequest cases.

It must also produce, each year of collection, for both the association and the

endowment fund, a use-of-funds statement [

compte d’emploi des ressources (CER)

] which is

linked to their respective annual accounts and which is easy to read for any donor, thanks, in

particular, to the obligatory explanatory annexes.

Finally, these CERs must be annexed to the annual accounts of the association and the

endowment fund that the League must publish in the Official Journal due to the amount of

both the public subsidies it receives and the donations it collects, which in both cases exceeds

the

€153,000

threshold set by decree. However, on these various points, gaps or errors were

noted.

Positive changes have been initiated, however, following significantly increased

awareness of these obligations on the part of the association’s directors; their pace must be

maintained so that the League completes the process of bringing itself into compliance with

its obligations and ensuring the sustainability of its actions through more efficient

management.

Opinions issued pursuant to Articles L. 111-9 and R. 143-11 of

the Financial Jurisdictions Code

At the end of its audit, in view of the checks it carried out and within the limits of the

prerogatives conferred

by Article L. 111-9 of the Financial Jurisdictions Code, the Court notes

that the expenses incurred by the Ligue

des Droits de l’Homme and its endowment fund,

during the financial years 2013 to 2018, are in line with the objectives pursued by the public

appeal to generosity on the one hand, and the objectives pursued by the association on the

other.

However, the Court has issued three reservations:

-

The use-of-funds statements for the resources collected did not comply with the

regulatory provisions in force during the financial years audited, and the annexes to the

accounts required by accounting regulations were not systematically published;

-

Analytical accounting monitoring remains incomplete as it only exists for expenses and

income under the responsibility of the head office, as the expenses borne by the local

sections are not broken down analytically but aggregated;

-

The communication materials do not mention the support given to the actions of the

Association européenne des droits de l’Homme (AEDH) [

European Association for Human

Rights

] and the campaign materials do not mention the link between the LDH and the

AEDH.