Barnabas Aid ‘Committed to Transparency and Excellence’

After coming under scrutiny and facing investigation in UK, ministry to persecuted Christians is turning things around.

Barnabas Aid is the subject of a Charity Commission investigation in the United Kingdom, but the charity that serves suffering and persecuted Christians worldwide is committed to repairing any lost trust and being fully transparent moving forward.

Photo via Facebook @Barnabas Aid USA dated September 4, 2025

In April, Patrick Sookdheo, founder of Barnabas Aid, was suspended from his role in the organization due to concerns about financial mismanagement and a toxic work culture.

The ministry hired Colin Bloom, a former British government official, to take the lead at Barnabas Aid International. Bloom had been retired for about a year when Barnabas Aid called upon him to “bring order to a bit of chaos.” He thought he’d be there about three months, but once they realized the scale of the task, the board asked him to stay on longer. Now he’s been at the job for 18 months and expects to stay a few more years as he has become passionate about the mission.

He said the ministry’s leadership has turned 180 degrees and is now committed to “transparency and excellence.”

“For donors and for donor funds, everything must be completely transparent,” Bloom emphasized, “and we’ve got nothing to hide.”

The Charity Commission’s investigation is likely to take a few years, Bloom said, so he doesn’t have an expected date of completion. The Charity Commission also told MinistryWatch the inquiry is ongoing and that it has “no update at this time.”

One step Bloom has taken to make the global family of ministries more transparent was to change the name of its umbrella organization, Nexcus International. Nexcus took in the money from various Barnabas Aid ministry branches around the world, but the name seemed to have no connection to the ministry. Bloom said he thought it was confusing and “deliberately obscure” to donors.

So in 2025, Bloom and the ministry’s leadership renamed Nexcus International to Barnabas Aid International.

Barnabas Aid USA is one of several Barnabas Aid ministries around the world that helps to raise awareness about persecution, raise funds, and promote prayer for suffering Christians. The funds raised in each country are then aggregated by Barnabas Aid International and distributed globally by one project team, Bloom explained.

The project team is made up of board members from each of the global ministries, who then have a vote on which projects are funded around the world.

The goal is to spend all donor funds “efficiently, effectively, and ethically,” Bloom said, adding that the ministry is “hypersensitive to the trust donors have placed” in the ministry.

Barnabas Aid shows an operating deficit of about $2 million last year. Bloom said that is because the UK investigation prevents funds raised by that Barnabas Aid branch from being used by the global ministry. Those funds are secure and accruing, he said, but in the meantime, the international ministry is using some reserves.

It also has significant reserves of $28 million—Bloom acknowledged that is currently too high. While it has benefited the ministry because of recent expenses for internal investigations and waiting on the UK funds to be released, he said the ministry doesn’t want to keep such significant sums on hand in the future.

“We are acutely aware that the optics of that need to be dealt with. In the long run, I think we’ll be in a much healthier position,” Bloom said about the cash on hand.

Barnabas Aid International spent about $2 million last year on internal investigations including legal inquiries and forensic accounting. The investigation is complete, but the results have not been released. Bloom said it would be inappropriate to put out the internal investigation results while waiting on the UK Charity Commission and others to complete their work.

However, he said the leaders of Barnabas Aid intend to release the internal report in the future. They also intend to recover the costs of the investigation “from those who put it in the position that we are in. Suffering Christians around the world shouldn’t be paying the price for other people’s wrongdoing.”

Based on its inquiry and experiences, the ministry has adopted a new suite of policies and procedures, and they are being adopted by the Barnabas Aid entities around the world. “It is a work in progress,” Bloom said.

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He provided several examples of the new policies.

As mentioned earlier, for global project spending, “every single penny is approved by a diverse group of independent board members.” Then those projects are monitored and evaluated to make sure the funds are spent “efficiently, effectively, and ethically,” Bloom explained.

Second, the leadership has also adopted safeguarding policies, requiring high standards of conduct of its staff, stakeholders, and partners.

Third, Bloom highlighted improvements in the ministry’s corporate governance. They have added new “properly vetted” board members who are “genuinely independent and bring their own perspectives and skills” to the ministry’s leadership. The board has also implemented term limits.

In 2025, Bloom reported that Barnabas Aid was able to help more suffering, displaced, and persecuted Christians than ever before.

In May 2024, Bloom studied Isaiah Chapter 1 and extrapolated four lessons from it: Barnabas Aid must own its mistakes, repent, be blisteringly transparent, and pursue everything with excellence.

Bloom believes the Lord is blessing the ministry’s work because it is endeavoring to do those four things more each day.

Bloom sees a redemptive arc in the story of Barnabas Aid. “I think this is a great story. A human institution started, did some things wrong, repented, went on to be flourishing. I think we are about to enter the third chapter in this trilogy we are in,” he said, adding that the success will not be about him, but about “a very special God.”

In the MinistryWatch database, Barnabas Aid International has a Financial Efficiency Rating of 2 out of 5 stars, an A transparency grade, and a Donor Confidence Score of 76 out of 100, meaning donors can “give with confidence.”

MAIN PHOTO: Photo via Facebook @Barnabas Aid USA dated September 4, 2025

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