A new charity commission

Australian Treasury department are holding consultations looking at the new 'charity commission' for Australia. If fundraisers don't consult it could be very damaging for us.

If you are working for, or on the board of an Australian charity please make sure you, your board and your CEO know what is going on.

Info from the new Commissions site:

Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ACNC). The ACNC will be an independent regulator and will:

• be advised by an Advisory Board chaired by Robert Fitzgerald AM
• report to Parliament through the Treasurer
• be staffed by around 90 officers, with potential for growth if additional functions are added
• be supported by the ATO in the provision of back-office services

Sounds terrifying - charities will be governed by Treasury.  That is too late to change, but what the rules are can still be influenced.  No time to delay people - they start their job on 1 July 2012.

I know it is boring, it is Government but if we don't consult and get this right, it won't be boring I can promise you that.

http://acnctaskforce.treasury.gov.au/content/content.aspx?doc=home.htm

How good are you, really?

We are hearing lots of horror stories about the fundraising markets of Europe and in the USA, but drilling down we see that there are lots of organisations that did grow through those economic woes.

Here in Australia, things appear to be going well still. So well that a few foreign charities are looking more seriously at fundraising over here. But are appearances deceiving?

There is only one way to find out - look at the data.

Over the past few years a group of Australian and New Zealand charities have been pooling transactional data to see how donors actually behave - what their average donations are, their attrition rates and more, including what percentage of donors put the charity in their will.

Of course, all the private data of individuals is kept confidential and not shared, but the wealth of information in the report is phenomenal.

A free report is available for all participating charities, and more in depth individualised reports can be purchased.

Charities interested only have a couple of weeks to register though.

More information:

http://www.paretofundraising.com/benchmarking/ or call me.

Sean