What “Operations & compliance” actually covers

Every organisation that handles other people's money has a line in its accounts that buys nothing you can photograph: no seedlings, no workshop materials, no radio programmes. In our 2025 figures that line is called Operations & compliance. It came to 18,000 USD — 12% of the 150,000 USD the foundation received during the year — and this article sets out exactly what it paid for. As with every 2025 number we publish, these are management figures, not yet audited; the audited statement will be published once the review is complete.

Two countries, two sets of obligations

The Phoenix Initiative works through two entities. There is the Colombian foundation, based in Rivera, in the department of Huila, where the field work happens. And there is the Fondation Phoenix Initiative France, an association under the French law of 1901, registered in the first quarter of 2025 and based in Vielle-Aure. That structure is what makes it possible to receive donations on two continents, with a proper receipt on either side.

It also means the administrative work exists twice. Two legal frameworks. Two calendars of filings. Two sets of books that must, at the end of the year, agree with each other. None of that is optional, and none of it does itself.

What the line covers

Concretely, Operations & compliance in 2025 covered three things:

• Accounting — keeping the books of both entities in order, so that every amount received and every amount spent can be traced, reconciled, and eventually handed to an auditor.
• Legal filings — the declarations and registrations required of a Colombian foundation on one side and of a French association loi 1901 on the other: the routine, unglamorous paperwork that keeps both entities in good standing.
• Hosting — the technical infrastructure behind the foundation's site and this journal, where the work is documented and where donation pledges begin.

That is the list. It is short, and each item exists for a reason a donor can check.

Why this is not overhead to be ashamed of

There is a habit, in the nonprofit world, of treating anything that is not field work as a fault — and of measuring an organisation's seriousness by how close to zero this line can be pushed. We think that logic runs backwards.

Consider what a donation to the foundation actually involves. A pledge is made on the site; the team replies by email with secure bank-transfer instructions; a tax receipt follows. That receipt is only worth something because the entity issuing it exists legally, files what it must file, and keeps accounts that can withstand scrutiny. The receipt, so to speak, is printed on compliance.

The same holds for the commitment we repeat throughout this journal: that the 2025 figures are management figures pending audit, and that an audited statement will be published. An audit is not conjured out of goodwill. It requires books that have been kept properly all year long. A foundation that promises audited accounts while budgeting nothing for accounting is promising something it cannot deliver.

Why we publish the line at all

Some organisations spread these costs across other categories until they disappear. The arithmetic still happens; it is simply hidden from the reader. We prefer the other convention: publish the line, at its real size, next to everything else.

In 2025 that table reads: ecological restoration 35%, eco-responsible infrastructure 20%, art, culture and education 18%, well-being and healthy living 10%, media and outreach 5%, operations and compliance 12% — of 150,000 USD received, on management figures not yet audited.

Twelve percent is not nothing, and we do not present it as nothing. It is the cost of being the kind of organisation whose other 88% can be verified. When the audited statement is published, this line will appear in it at the same level of detail as every pillar — which is, in the end, the whole point of having it.