Explore the enhanced Charity Register: connect, collaborate, innovate

The Hon Dr Gary Johns

Welcome to the launch of the Charity Marketplace.

Welcome in particular to the Honourable Michael Sukkar MP, Assistant Treasurer, Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness, Social and Community Housing, and to Tony Stuart, Chair of the ACNC Advisory Board, and I understand via video, Heather Watson of the Board, who is in damp old Brisbane.

Welcome also to guests, staff of the Commission and friends, most particularly people who have helped us in making the Charity Marketplace possible, especially several members of my staff and many outside who collaborated with us.

Now, four years ago, we started on a journey by asking a simple question - what is useful information - and we asked the question because the ACNC Act asks the Commission to "provide information to help the public understand the work of the sector".

Now, that's not as simple as it might first appear. For example, useful information for whom?

The public, like the charity sector, is made up of an extraordinary range of individuals and entities. We assumed the information we should provide was for all parties with an interest in the charity sector. So that's donors, researchers, service users, volunteers and charities.

We aim to inspire giving, to facilitate collaboration and innovation, to foster partnerships and learning, and provide a more detailed view into the charity world to support better informed decision making.

Now, this idea of a place where all those with an interest in charities could come inspired the phrase that drove the work that we're launching today: the Charity Marketplace. Our simple question became how best to capture useful information.

The Register provides surety of a charity's integrity but, in consulting it, you cannot readily determine what a charity does. Unless you already know the name of a specific charity running a specific program, finding what you're looking for is difficult.

More important, and this is the central feature from a market perspective, you cannot see what charities exist that deliver similar activities and services. This is what we mean when we talk about helping the public to make informed decisions.

Now, I might say that the Minister and Tony Stuart have been on board this journey from day one and I thank them for it.

We visited a great many charities in the last four years but, especially in the early period, it seemed that, whenever we sat down and had a cup of tea and scones and spoke to Responsible Persons, they always talked about the programs that they were delivering to their beneficiaries.

And that was it. The work of the sector is best described by the programs charities run for their beneficiaries. The issue for us became how to capture those programs.

Our key reporting instrument is the Annual Information Statement, so the information had to be caught in the AIS. We spied our friends at Our Community using a taxonomy of not-for-profit and charitable causes. Familiar words to describe causes. We refined the taxonomy to suit charitable purposes and, with the definition of each of approximately 800 charitable purposes, there are thousands of words and synonyms that will help you navigate your way to your preference among the array of programs offered by Australian charities to the beneficiaries.

Now, the two elements (programs and the charitable taxonomy) - to those two elements was added a much finer offering of geographic locations for program services, down to, in some cases, suburbs. We retained the previous list of beneficiaries.

Of course, we had to solve the information issue within the bounds of our powers, as my lawyers reminded me often. We invited charities to use the system, conscious that we could not ask more than the question we'd asked for many years about main activity. So we asked instead, as you well know now, for main program.

We provide the option of placing up to 10 programs in the AIS, and some of the very large charities thought that this would be too much of a burden because they run hundreds of programs.

However, when they thought about it, they had only a handful of programs but delivered these in many locations. We have now seen the results and are pleased to say that large charities have entered their programs at multiple locations. For small charities, many of which run one program, there was no extra work at all.

Now, at the end of the first year, in addition to 60,000 charities on the Register (and not all report through the AIS), we have about 80,000 programs so far. These are specific as to who they assist and where the service is delivered, including online.

Soon we'll incorporate all the international locations where Australian charities deliver programs, and so far in the 2021 AIS early submissions, there are more programs than in the 2020 AIS.

Charities are reporting, on average, 1.9 programs in the 2021 Annual Information Statement. When comparing charities that have submitted both a '20 and a '21 AIS, so far there's been a 3% increase in the number of programs. Interestingly, these appear to have come from charities expanding their offerings. For example, the number of charities that provided three or more programs increased from 14% to 19% of charities.

Now, soon charities will be able to update programs in real time, particularly useful when disasters strike and charities add a program to support recovery, for example. We recently added a new category of grant maker and see currently that more than 900 such charities are on the list.

The beauty of the Marketplace is that for the first time the public will have the ability to find similar programs on offer in the charity market. Not knowing the name of a charity, you will find the work of charities that suit your interests and you will find where they are delivered.

Which programs and charities people decide to support using the information provided on the register is up to them. Most people donate or volunteer based on life experience. A register does not substitute for that experience but it can enhance it or lead to further options in giving and volunteering. What the Marketplace brings is visibility to the sector in its finest offering, its programs.

But wait. There's more. We think there'll be multiple users of the marketplace. Philanthropists, grant makers, trusts and governments, groups such as workplace giving will find the Marketplace a powerful tool.

And, of course, if it's not giving, it's volunteering. A volunteer might be looking for a charity in their suburb or region. They may be new to town looking for a way to get involved. Individuals might need a charitable service and will find it especially useful for that.

Charities will use it for collaboration. Often there are new entrants to the sector (in fact, about 40 a week) who will benefit mightily from experienced hands. They can see who else is doing similar things and, indeed, might establish some firm, professional networks and connections.

And, of course, there are those who advise philanthropy as well as academic researchers and journalists. There are enormous numbers of people who will find the information in the Charity Marketplace useful.

In fact, there were more than four and a half million searches of the Register last year and we have observed almost one million searches of the Register in January/February this year. That equates to six million searches through 2022. Keep in mind we went public with this on the 1stof December, so people have been using it and looking for information on it.

The Marketplace will help in finding the charitable deeds of this company. We are enormously proud of what we've built: a searchable register that can help you find a cause close to your heart.

Thank you, and may I invite the Minister to launch the Charity Marketplace.

The Hon Michael Sukkar MP

Well, good morning everyone. Thanks so much, Gary, and to everybody at the ACNC for the opportunity to launch the ACNC Charity Register, which has been so well articulated by Gary. Gary, again, thank you, and Anna and everybody at the ACNC for a heroic effort over COVID, and to be able to continue to progress important reforms like this during that very difficult time is something that I really commend you for.

Can I also acknowledge Tony Stuart who's here? Tony, thank you for your great support of the ACNC and your stewardship of the Advisory Board and also to all of the other leaders who will be speaking today: Jack Heath, Lisa Kingman and Sarah Tennant. Thank you for lending your support to this event.

Look, as everyone in this room is well aware, your sector plays a phenomenally important role in all of our communities. It's underscored by the millions of Australians who give to or work for or volunteer for charities.

Ultimately though, Australians' support for charities is underpinned by their trust and confidence that the sector is delivering the vital support to those in need.

The ACNC Register is and I think will be an even bigger source of information on Australian charities; who they are, as Gary has outlined, where they operate and what they do.

As Gary also said, it holds information on almost 60,000 charities and 80,000 programs and that will just grow each and every year. I think that the transparency that this Register provides will ultimately build upon that public trust and confidence that you all know is so important in the sector.

I think the platform will connect donors and charities. I think it will foster greater collaboration (although the sector, I think, does punch above its weight in that respect anyway) and will ultimately support philanthropy and grant making.

It will open a very interesting window to the sector for those who are not experts like you in this room where we're able to see the scope and breadth and, indeed, be able to identify where there are holes in the services that are currently being provided.

It will also give all charities an online presence and that will enable particularly small charities a greater opportunity to showcase their work, often who don't have any other online presence. We all think of that as being a fairly low barrier to entry these days but this will be a great thing for those smaller charities I suspect.

But as Gary has said, and I'm adopting Gary's lingo, it's more than just a register, it's now a marketplace, and there are endless permutations (by service, location or beneficiary).

If you wish to find charities that support disease research of one particular kind or another, you can. If you wish to find a local charity to volunteer for - as Gary said, you've moved into a new part of Australia - you can now find it. If you wish to find a homelessness support service, you now have a better ability to find it.

Philanthropists and grant makers also have a new way of identifying charities that serve the causes or beneficiaries that they want to also support. We also have made regulation changes to enable charities to make voluntary real-time updates to their Charity Register. This will mean that charities don't have to wait until their annual reporting in order to update the world through the Charity Register of what they're doing.

Now, these improvements to information for the broader community come at a time when demand for information and access to charitable support services is quite obviously of huge importance. We've seen the unprecedented challenges over the last two years, commencing with the Black Summer bushfires, heading into two years of gruelling COVID - for all the Melbournians in the room, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but indeed all Australians - and now we're seeing crippling flooding in south-east Queensland.

But pleasingly from my perspective and credit to Gary and, indeed, credit to everybody in this room, charities have undoubtedly risen to the occasion, adjusting their business's usual operations to importantly continue to provide the support that they are there for.

Restrictions on movement in our cities hampered the ability of many charities to provide their face-to-face and on-ground services. Compounding this, business activities that bring charities together and bring income to charities just weren't able to function.

So while we won't have a full picture of the impact on charities until the release of the data for the 2020 reporting period, I think it's clear from a number of reports and indeed the Centre for Social Impact suggests that 85% of surveyed charities experienced a significant reduction in revenue and 72% experienced a reduction in donations.

So the government, during that time, to help support you in what you're doing, introduced a range of initiatives to continue to support the sector. We obviously put in place - and it seems like a while ago now but we put in place the reduced turnover test for JobKeeper eligibility, reflecting a significant part of a charity's revenue is for the delivery of aid and specific programs.

A $200 million community support package supporting those supplying emergency support and, importantly, food relief. Changes to the ancillary fund guidelines to give incentives for funds to increase their distributions to DGR recipients, and the declaration of the pandemic as a disaster for tax purposes, which enabled Australian disaster relief funds set up for COVID to obtain DGR status and received deductible donations through to March this year.

I also want to commend the ACNC, who's provided significant support to helping charities, by extending, importantly, reporting deadlines, releasing guidance for annual general meetings, which I've had a lot of feedback was very useful, and, importantly, relaxing its regulation of the governance and External Conduct Standards.

So while the Australian economy is rebounding, and we think rebounding strongly, the landscape for charities will continue to evolve and there's no doubt that you will all face very unique challenges.

So beyond this initial COVID response and trying to support this work of the ACNC, we have made significant progress on key reforms aimed at reducing red tape for you all - there's no shortage of red tape that you all have to deal with - which will maintain trust in the sector while ensuring you can be as efficient as possible.

There's always a trade-off, as you know, between increased transparency and the administrative burden placed on charities, but we're very proud that we lifted the reporting threshold for small charities to under $500,000 annual revenue and the reporting threshold for medium charities to under $3 million. This means that, for two and a half thousand smaller charities, they won't be required to produce financial statements, saving, on average, each of those charities around two and a half thousand dollars, and, for about 2,700 medium-sized charities, saving them around $3,000 in expenses that they would ordinarily incur annually.

We've also continued to move the ball forward, albeit excruciatingly slowly, on fundraising laws harmonisation. It's a long-standing issue. It's an issue that was raised with me the first time I ever met with anybody from the charity sector, and that's why we put it on the national deregulation agenda through the National Cabinet. That's how high of an issue we have made it.

A working group, which is chaired by the Commonwealth Treasury, has already started meeting with all jurisdictions to develop a way forward. Consultation continues and I'll be continuing to work very closely with my counterparts, once the officials have continued and have completed their consultation, to ensure this important project remains a priority and moves quickly, but raising it to a National Cabinet level I think will see this move much more quickly in the foreseeable future.

So, again, they're a few of the things that we've done just to try and help the sector, but I want to congratulate Gary and the ACNC again. I think this will provide a much more complete picture of the sector. I think it brings a great deal of opportunities for nearly 60,000 charities. It creates a really vibrant marketplace, as Gary has described it, and it's the product of Gary and his team's vision over many years. I'm very proud to have supported it. I thank Tony. I thank everybody in the sector who has willingly and cooperatively embraced this, and now the proof seems to be in the pudding since its launch on the 1st of December but I really look forward to the Charity Register doing everything that we hope it will and even more.

So I'm delighted to officially launch the Charity Register, and I think I am now handing over to Anna, who will take us through a demonstration. Thank you everyone.

Recorded video

The enhanced Charity Register opens a world of opportunities to connect with Australia's registered charities. Donors, philanthropists, grant makers, supporters and volunteers can find a cause close to their hearts, and charities can connect with each other. Collaboration, partnerships and innovation will be easier than ever as the Register helps people across the sector find charity information.

Find the Charity Register on the ACNC website home page. Go to Search for a Charity. You'll see that you can now use the Register to find a charity or to find a charity program. Let's take a look at a few examples of the new program search features.

Maria is a grants manager with a philanthropic trust that supports arts charities based in Adelaide, South Australia. Maria would like to invite arts charities in Adelaide to apply for a grant. She visits the Charity Register and, in the program search, Maria goes to Type of Activity or Service. From the list of categories, she selects Arts and Culture. In Location, she types Adelaide and selects Adelaide, South Australia. Maria can refine the search based on who the charity helps. She selects Adults aged 65 and over and Males. By default, charity results appear in map view, with location pins on the map and the charity name on the screen to the left-hand side. Maria can select a charity to see its information on the Charity Register, either by clicking on the pin on the map or in the list on the left-hand side. Alternatively, she can click here to see the charity results in list view.

Let's look at another example. Li is a university student studying vet sciences. He lives in a small town in Queensland and would like to find a charity on the nearby Gold Coast to volunteer with each weekend. Li goes to Type of Activity or Service. From the list of categories, he selects Animal Welfare. In Location, he types Gold and then selects Gold Coast, Queensland. Li can see both the map view and the list view of local animal welfare charities.

Another way Li could search is to go to Type of Activity or Service and type Animal. There are different kinds of animal programs to choose from. Animal welfare is one of them.

And one more example. Yasmin leads a charity that provides services in Melbourne's north in the suburb of Broadmeadows. Her charity assists people who are experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of homelessness. Yasmin wants to reach out to other local charities to see if they would like to collaborate on a new health project.

Yasmin goes to Location, types Broadmeadows and selects Broadmeadows, Victoria. She selects a one kilometre radius from Broadmeadows to reduce the number of charities. That will make it quicker to scan each charity's details on the Charity Register to see if they would be suitable to collaborate with on the health project.

Another way to search would be to click Reset, type in Broadmeadows, select Broadmeadows, Victoria, then go to Type of Activity or Service and select Health.

As these examples show, enhanced Charity Register search features allow you to find a cause close to your heart. Of course, you can still use the Register as you would have done up until now. Select Search by Charity if you know a charity's name or its ABN and would like to see more information about it.

Now there are even more reasons to check the Charity Register.

Anna Longley

Hello everyone. Hopefully you enjoyed that demonstration. Every time I see it, I get excited all over again. And thank you very much, Minister Sukkar, for launching the enhanced Charity Register and also for your continued support of the ACNC.

This is the culmination of several hard years of work on the part of a team of people both inside and outside of the ACNC, many of whom, happily, have been able to join us here today. The demonstration will have given you a sense of why we are so proud to have been able to deliver these enhancements to the Charity Register.

As the video showed, the public, including donors, grant makers, funders, service users, volunteers, charities and researchers, can now search across the Register in a completely new way. No longer do you need to know the name of a specific charity but you can search by interest, beneficiary group or geographic location, all supported by a taxonomy developed for the charity and not-for-profit sector by Our Community.

We're fortunate today to be supported by the Chief Executive Officers of three organisations, who are each willing to provide their views on the enhanced Charity Register.

Our first speaker is Jack Heath from Philanthropy Australia. Philanthropy Australia is the national peak body for philanthropy. It was established 40 years ago and represents more than 700 trusts, foundations, organisations, families, individual donors, professional advisers, intermediaries and not-for-profits as their members and partners.

It's a growing movement of people and organisations who believe in the importance of giving, and members are proud to leverage their wealth and influence to create positive social change and community benefit, and that happens at a local, rural, regional, city and national level through their offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane.

Philanthropy Australia has a vision for generous and inclusive Australia. Its purpose is to inspire more and better philanthropy. It informs everything it does. Jack Heath is the CEO of Philanthropy Australia. Jack has been a leader in the charitable sector for over two decades. He brings to Philanthropy Australia a deep-seated belief in the ability of philanthropy to change lives. He sees philanthropy as a driving force for good in a time of diminished trust and institutions and huge societal challenges. He advocates for a philanthropy that is big-hearted, clear-headed and joyful.

On those very uplifting words, I welcome Jack Heath.

Jack Heath

Thank you very much, Anna, and good morning everybody, Assistant Treasurer, Commissioner Johns, Assistant Commissioner Longley, distinguished guests. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we're gathered today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and any First Nations people that may be with us today.

At Philanthropy Australia, we are committed to doubling philanthropic giving by 2030. That is, in terms of structured giving, we want to see giving increase from 2.5 to five billion dollars by 2030, and I must say, Assistant Treasurer and to your office, that we've been very encouraged in terms of the discussions we've been having with you about what we might be able to do to make that a reality, so thank you for that.

Part of that thing about doubling giving is that we need innovation, and this innovation, as you've seen firsthand, is a critical building step for philanthropy to understand and work with charities to increase the scale of national giving. It's a really valuable tool in our quest to lift philanthropic giving to better support Australians in need.

As we've seen in the demonstration, it works to amplify the geography of giving for volunteers and donors to connect with charities nearby, and we all understand the power of local charities to provide that connective tissue that helps sustain our communities and, as the Minister was saying, something so important over the past couple of years. It was interesting, we saw the example around Queensland is it's better able to inform people about giving, including to rural and regional and remote Australia, and that's a really critical contribution.

So as it helps organisations, people, to align with their causes for giving, I think the data that we've got here is absolutely outstanding, and the Commissioner was talking in terms of the visitors. To me, that is the actual true test of the value of the service. So we do need to understand better insights and gain better insights that will support and grow giving because, at the end of the day, that's all about transforming the lives of people who are in great need.

So on behalf of Philanthropy Australia, I'd like to extend my congratulations to the ACNC, to the whole team, to the Commissioner, the Assistant Commissioner, and also to wholeheartedly to thank the Minister for launching this wonderful initiative. Thanks so much.

Anna Longley

Thank you very much for your words, Jack, and also for making the trip to Melbourne to be with us today.

I would now like to introduce Tanarra Philanthropic Advisers. Tanarra Philanthropic Advisers is a pro bono advisory service boosting the strategic and financial position of Australian charities. The team uses their commercial skills to help charities to be the best they can be. One highlight is a board health check, a quick and free online tool developed by Tanarra to help not-for-profit boards analyse clearly and have an honest conversation about how well they're achieving their goals.

Lisa Kingman is the CEO of Tanarra Philanthropic Advisers. Unfortunately, Lisa is no longer able to join us today. However, I do have a short statement to read on Lisa's behalf. Lisa is one of Australia's most respected independent advisers to the community and corporate sectors, having been at the coalface of social change strategies for decades. Awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2021 for her charity business contribution and recognised in 2018 as one of Australia's 100 Women of Influence for her community work, Lisa's impact can be seen and felt in hundreds of communities, companies and charities.

In Lisa's words:

"We've provided pro bono advice for hundreds of charities. We ask their boards to identify who is doing complementary or similar work as it's important to understand where you fit in the ecosystem, your differentiation and where collaboration would deliver better outcomes for your beneficiaries.

In the main, charities have tiny marketing budgets, so broadening awareness is a continual challenge. COVID has forced a rethink of traditional fundraising events. It makes good sense to seek out like-minded organisations and collaborate. For example, if there'sthree small organisations all working in the same core space, they could pool resources and share the fundraising outcomes."

If you would please join me in acknowledging Lisa's words.

Lastly, we will be now hearing from Sarah Tennant from GIVIT. Now, GIVIT is situated in Brisbane so I'm extremely thankful that Sarah is able to join us today. She will be joining online today as well.

GIVIT is a not-for-profit donation platform that works with more than 4,300 support organisations around Australia to ensure vulnerable people get what they need when they need it most. This includes people recovering from an emergency event or experiencing hardship due to circumstances such as drought, domestic and family violence, homelessness, disability or mental health issues.

Through givit.org.au, offers of goods and services are captured online, removing the need for charities and services to sort, store and dispose of unrequested donations, saving valuable resources. Money donated to GIVIT to support people in need is used to purchase essential items and services.

Sarah Tennant began her career at not-for-profit donation platform GIVIT in 2014, spending more than four years as National Stakeholder Manager before taking on the role of Chief Executive Officer in 2019. With a background in science communication, Sarah holds an advanced science degree with first class honours in biotechnology from the University of New South Wales, graduate diploma in scientific communication from Australian National University, graduate diploma in secondary teaching from the University of Canberra and a masters of environmental science and law from Sydney University.

I'd like you to please help me in welcoming Sarah Tennant, joining us from Brisbane.

Sarah Tennant

Thank you so much, Anna, for that wonderful warm welcome. You've obviously done your homework, and yes, a huge apology for not being there in person. As you can imagine, being based in Brisbane and our core work being disaster recovery, we are literally swamped at the moment. So thank you so much for the invitation to be involved in this morning's launch of the enhanced Charity Register. This is going to be a game changer for people in the not-for-profit area.

As a national charity that relies on donors to support not only operations but also provides goods and services for the people in need across Australia, this is going to make a huge difference connecting us to charities and connecting us to donors. For those who are not familiar with the work of GIVIT (and thank you very much for the introduction), we are a national online charity that links people who want to give with people in need, and our whole purpose is to make giving really, really easy.

So donors can give to causes through our website they are passionate about, and they can pledge offers of goods, services, time and money directly into our online warehouse, which is about to support the charities in not having to actually store and manage unwanted donations, which you can imagine in times of disaster such as we're going through now is a really, really important function.

So the new functionality makes it really easy for donors to find us and support not only our fantastic work but meet the needs that are identified by over 4,000 charities across the country. Like so many Australian charities, we rely really heavily on donors to support our operations but also provide those essential goods and services, and we do provide a lot of volunteers, particularly in times of disasters, to increase our capacity. So anything that is making it easier for donors to directly connect to us is a huge advantage.

The GIVIT model also relies on the wonderful charities we support. They are our eyes and ears on the ground to identify that genuine need. We use the ACNC Registry regularly as part of our due diligence when registering new charities and we can now search for specific charities at specific locations really easily through this functionality.

As you can imagine right now in this disaster, we are helping communities across Queensland and New South Wales impacted by the flood. This functionality allows us to very quickly reach out to specific charities in specific areas and make sure people in need get exactly what they need when they need it most.

So on behalf of GIVIT and the charity sector, a huge, huge thank you to ACNC for the work, for making our job to help support Australians in need even easier. Thank you everybody.

Anna Longley

Thank you very much, Sarah. We particularly appreciate your time during what I know is a very busy time for GIVIT and a challenging and uncertain time for you and your staff.

As the Commissioner stated earlier, in imagining the enhanced Register, we had some lofty aims: to inspire giving, to facilitate collaboration and innovation, to foster partnerships and learning and support informed decision making.

Hearing the words of Jack, Lisa and Sarah today, it seems that those aspirations are shared. I look forward almost as much as the Commissioner to be able to report on the use of the enhanced Charity Register in the coming years.

I must say, this is the largest event I've left the house for in quite some time, and the Commissioner, the ACNC team and I would like to thank you all for making it such a success, for coming along today and for joining online. Thank you also for your continued engagement with the ACNC.

I would like to again thank Minister Sukkar for launching the enhanced Charity Register. I am aware that you have another engagement today that you have to leave for shortly so we definitely appreciate you taking the time. Thank you also to Jack Heath, Lisa Kingman OAM, Sarah Tennant for their words of support.

Finally, I thank the team who made the launch event possible, the event centre and MAV, along with ACNC staff, in particular Rachel Smith, Karen Coghlan, Sharon Lee, Breanna Murray and Peta Kerr. If I've missed you out, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.

If you haven't already, I encourage you to visit the enhanced Charity Register on the ACNC website and have a go at finding a cause close to your heart. Then tell your networks. I also invite you to stay around and continue to enjoy networking in person. Thank you very much.