Australians more generous to the tune of $676 million: ACNC Report

The 9^th edition of the ACNC Australian Charities Report also revealed revenue earned by the nation’s charities surged $14 billion to more than $190 billion.

The annual analysis of the charities sector, the first to be released under Commissioner Sue Woodward, looked at the annual information statements of more than 49,000 charities from the 2021 reporting period.

The time frame covered by the report coincides with covid-19 and offers a valuable ‘rear view mirror’ lens on the dramatic impact of the pandemic on the sector.

The report confirms the widely documented decline in the number of Australians volunteering, as previously reported by Our Community, which fell by 596,000 to 3.2 million between 2018 and 2021.

The significant decline in volunteer numbers – which dropped by more than 200,000 in 2021-2022 alone – is currently being addressed via the National Strategy for Volunteering.

The wide-ranging ACNC report provides a comprehensive snapshot of the charity sector, from a state-by-state breakdown of which charities attract the most donations to what charities spend money on and the split between volunteers and paid employees.

Key findings include:

• Employee wages helped drive a $7.1 billion rise in charity expenses to $175 billion, while increased service delivery costs due to inflation loom as a major challenge for the sector.
• Charities were confirmed as a major employer in Australia, with the sector accounting for 1.42 million jobs, or 10.5 per cent of the national workforce – putting it on a par with the construction and retail industries.
• Charities employed 110,000 more people between 2018 and 2021, with 40,000 additional workers joining the sector since 2020.
• Volunteers continue to underpin charity work, with half of all charities operating with no paid staff.
• There is now one charity for every 433 Australians.

The report highlighted the hot button issue of tax-deductible giving, with 41.5 per cent of charities obtaining deductible gift recipient (DGR) status from the Australian Taxation Office.

The findings confirmed DGR-endorsed charities are more likely to receive donations.

In her foreword to the report, Ms Woodward said the Productivity Commission’s review into philanthropy, which is exploring ways to double philanthropic giving by 2030, has helped make philanthropy “part of the current national conversation.”

While an estimated $13.4 billion of charity revenue (7 per cent) is made up of donations and bequests, charities distributed $9.7 billion in grants and donations.

“Our data confirms not only that philanthropists are significant in number – nearly one fifth of registered charities are grant makers – but they also play a very significant role in funding those charities we regulate,” said Ms Woodward.

At more than $97 billion, government funding and government grants accounted for more than 51 per cent of charities’ revenue.

Break-out quote: “Despite challenges, Australia’s registered charities reported a significant increase in total revenue, donations and assets in the 2021 reporting period.”

Key changes to the methodology of this year’s report included more state-based analysis, comparisons with data from the 2018 Australian Charities Report and increased data visualisation.