Errors with International Grant Disbursements

What Happened: In June-August 2024, Mountaintop faced some confusion related to challenges with sending money internationally due to exchange rate complexities and money transfer website exchange rate markups. These challenges created temporary distress and inconvenience for some Fellows. This included:

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1. Not accounting for the money transfer website exchange rate markups in our Fellow Handbook, which would have meant that our Fellows would have received slightly less than the money they were promised in their contracts.

2. At the request of a host, putting a Fellow grant amount in a local currency, which then faced extreme devaluation by the time the fellowship started, reducing the real value of the grant. 

How Mountaintop Responded: For #1, a Mountaintop staff member identified the issue before the first monthly grant payments were sent, allowing for the organization to quickly update its policies and increase the monthly payments to ensure that Fellows received their fair share as indicated in their contracts. For #2, Mountaintop honored the Fellow's grant amount in US dollars that had been initially communicated on the Mountaintop website. In both cases, Mountaintop made financial sacrifices in order to stay consistent with our commitments to Fellows, which created an unexpected additional expense in our budget.​

Mountaintop's Learning and Commitment: Mountaintop has learned to account for the complexities of exchange rate markups and international exchange rates. Going forward, Mountaintop will always budget for Fellow grants to have the additional cost of exchange rate markups, and ensure all contracts use US dollars to maximize the stability of the grants' value.