The purpose of this memo is to address the Board of Directors of the Iowa Islamic Alliance that joining Better Business Bureau would be sufficient to ensure donors’ confidence. This memo will analyze the reasons why several Muslim Charities choose BBB Wise Giving Alliance instead of CPA firms, and the differences between an audit and a review of financial statements. Lastly, I will show other benefits from the BBB certification process.

Reasons for choosing BBB Wise Giving Alliance
After the terrorist attacks of September 11st in 2001, the donation for Muslim charities dropped substantially. In order to enhance donors’ confidence, there are seven Muslim charities that have turned to Better Business Bureau (BBB) to examine and verify their performance. For charities, BBB Wise Giving Alliance is a great place to earn more trust from donors. After meeting the 20 standards for charity accountability, which includes the basic information of charities and the criteria and procedures of the alliance, charities become qualified to be members of the alliance. To be a member means the charity has been approved and owns more creditability.

In addition, compared to the independent CPA firms, which only use financial statements to provide auditing service, Better Business Bureau does assurance service, which includes not only financial information, but also non-financial information such as risk analysis, control processes and business performance. By doing assurance service, information would be valid and transparent, which efficiently mitigates the information risk and settles donors’ fears that donors may have. Donors want more information to insure their donation is used for the intended purpose rather than making wealthy richer.

Differences between an audit and a review of financial statements
In order to indicate that the financial statements accord with GAAP