Wall Watchers is a Donor Advocate. As a Donor Advocate, Wall Watchers argues for the cause, needs, and desire of Donors. Different fact situations require different approaches in being an advocate. One commonality to these different fact situations is the need for individually tailored research.

Much of this research could be classified as "on-call research", because Wall Watchers literally receives impromptu calls, emails, letters and packages concerning a wide variety of issues. Many of these issues and situations could not have been anticipated except that they were brought to our attention. Some of these issues are specific items to analyze, due diligence to be preformed, best practice to share and educate, and allegations of wrongdoing.

Sources of these issues and subjects are brought to our attention by donors, through complaints of other ministries, media attention, and ministries asking advice with implementing best practices, various governmental interaction, and sometimes insiders as whistleblowers.

Research is generally accomplished by a diverse group in various capacities with Wall Watchers; however, they are researchers familiar with aspects of tax-exempt and nonprofit research. These aspects can be summarized as "The 5 P’s of Research". It is the People and Process factors within an organization that produce the Program and Performance outcomes for that entity. All external factors, regulatory boundaries and demographics are the Peripheral. Viewed in isolation, each of these factors provides only a partial picture, but looked at collectively, the factors contribute to a comprehensive assessment of an organization.

Further insight of some of the categories of issues brought to Wall Watchers attention are the following:

Donor issues of import such as compensation of leadership (that the organization is mission focused and not overly focused on financial gain), knowledge that their donation is being used as solicited (the veracity of truth claims on both a financial level and that a particular organization really stands for certain values), and that donor dollars are being used in an efficient and effective manner.

Analyzing the economic assertions made by organizations to determine the correctness of those assertions, financial efficiency, entity structure and information on key leadership in order to identify materially misleading behavior, or wasteful spending practices, as well as those operations that are above board and running efficiently.

Best practices research of tax-exempt entities, i.e. governance, transparency, financial efficiency, program effectiveness, organizational structure, and internal controls.

Due diligence research of organizations, such as the legitimacy of entities, various truth claims asserted, joint ventures between exempt and nonexempt entities, private inurement, self-dealing, evaluating regulatory compliance, compliance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), and financial irregularities. In addition to administrative, civil and criminal issues.

Allegations and/or predication of just some of the potential wrongdoing has included:

1. Money laundering
2. Racketeering
3. Tax fraud
4. Private inurement
5. Unrelated business income tax
6. Shell company scheme
7. Personal purchases with company funds
8. False invoicing via vendors
9. Misuse of fixed assets (such as "borrowing" assets for non-business purposes)
10. Theft of assets (unconcealed larceny and/or larceny in plain sight)
11. Kickbacks
12. Conflict of Interest
13. Expense reimbursement schemes
14. Check tampering
15. Prepared fraudulent checks for own benefit
16. Programmatic reporting schemes
17. Breaching Duty of Loyalty

Just because requests for various research and allegations come to our attention does not mean that we take on each and every one of those grievances or desires. There are many reasons why we may not pursue a request. A large factor is that the demand is much larger than we have resources. Because of this we need to be discerning in which requests to pursue.

Many times the results of individually tailored research do not get profiled on MinistryWatch.com. The presentation is sometimes that of an individually tailored written report, sometimes a one-on-one discussion, or to a small group, a management team, or meeting with the attorneys and accountants of an entity, and sometimes a report and discussion with a governmental entity.

Sometimes being in the role of an "advocate" will offend others. But this is not done capriciously and carelessly with the intention to harm anyone, but to the contrary in order to plead the case and cause of donors as many do not seem to have a venue and voice to be heard.