The transparent kindergarten

Civil society organizations – and we include rainbowtrekkers – are subject to state control in Germany, but hardly any social control. In the case of a daycare provider such as the rainbowtrekkers, state control is mainly exercised by the tax offices with regard to non-profit issues and by the youth welfare offices, which check whether the state funding have been used in accordance with the guidelines.

However, this means that the efficiency of the taxpayers’ money used and the pedagogical output is not or only very marginally monitored. As taxpaying parents, however, we believe that you have a right to know that we have not only entered your money in the correct legal books, but have also used it in such a way that it has created added value for both society in general and the education system in particular.

In contrast to Germany, the Anglo-Saxon countries are much more firmly convinced that transparency is a value in itself when dealing with non-profit organizations (NPO) and/or non-governmental organizations (NGO). Today’s German legislation in the non-profit sector primarily considers the governmental, but hardly any societal information needs. This has above all historical reasons stemming from Christian social teaching. No one should – so it is standardized – brag that he or she is doing something good for others.

Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matth. 6, 1-4)

The churches, later the religious and other welfare organizations and finally the whole sector have already derived from this a requirement of secrecy (Strachwitz 2015). In doing so, they have failed to recognize that over the course of the centuries action oriented towards the common good has been redefined and reorganized in many other respects – not at least by the emergence of large institutional actors of the common good that go far beyond individual action. In the last two centuries personal charity has gradually become a norm of solidarity, the voluntary nature of the gift has turned into the contribution to justice to be demanded, and the service to one’s neighbor has turned into the commitment of citizens (ibid.).

According to the traditional social teaching, as few people as possible should know about charity, nor should you give an account of it to yourself (your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing). To put it in modern terms: Even a controlling, an internal ex-post verification of the success of charity, seems at first glance to be difficult to reconcile with the traditional concept of charity as an expression of the commandment of charity.

As a modern, socially entrepreneurially managed organization, we at rainbowtrekkers therefore see the postulate of secrecy and the waiver of control somewhat differently. Our reasons for demanding more transparency do not primarily have anything to do with a general suspicion of corruption or misallocation. Rather, together with other innovative agencies in the social sector, we see a number of democratic-theoretical arguments in addition to ethical principles of a good civil society: