Snap poll shows many in the sector aren’t advocating for themselves

Nearly 700 people signed up for Community Directors' one-hour Not for Profit Agenda news webinar last Thursday. Of those, 108 responded to a live poll about whether they had raised concerns about their organisation’s sustainability with any MP since the most recent federal poll in May last year.

Of all the respondents, 47 per cent had not spoken to an MP in that time.

The poll followed comments earlier in the webinar from Community Council for Australia (CCA) chief executive David Crosbie, who, in a wide-ranging conversation, argued that the sector is poor at advocating for itself.

“We are very good advocates, but we're very good advocates for our cause, not for our own sector,” Crosbie said.

He said sector groups routinely lobbied on behalf of the people they served, such as people with disability or problem gamblers, but rarely made the case for their own organisations.

Crosbie argued that it was high time for not-for-profits to better advocate for their own needs, in much the same way business lobbies do.

Crosbie said the absence of any federal government department dedicated to the charity sector, unlike small business, agriculture or tourism, also meant it was harder to get noticed.

"There's no Department of Charities and Not-for-profits,” he said. “There's not even a single bureaucrat employed at the federal government level whose role it is to monitor and support our sector.”

A related matter was the lack of data about the sector’s issues, even though not-for-profits and charities comprised 11 per cent of the workforce, he said.

By independently trawling through government data related to more than 15,000 charities, researchers working pro bono for the CCA had uncovered the fact that the average length of a Commonwealth government contract issued to one of those charities was 12 months, a figure that had not changed since 2019.

"No one thinks funding organisations on a 12-monthly basis enables them to invest in their capacity to do the kinds of things organisations need to do, not only to sustain themselves, but to improve and get better. It's a broken system. We're set up to fail, and the government's at the heart of it.”

His concerns about funding were also raised in the poll responses.

Fairer contracts, DGR reform top the list

Of the poll respondents who had engaged with an MP, fairer and longer funding contracts or “paying what it takes” funding (funding that covers the true cost of providing services) was raised by 62 per cent. Other prominent issues raised with MPs included red tape reduction (14 per cent), reform of deductible gift recipient (DGR) status (12 per cent), help with impact measurement (10 per cent), assistance with artificial intelligence (9 per cent), digital inclusion concerns (7 per cent) and support for energy transition and climate change adaptation (7%).

Many issues at play in the not-for-profit sector

Crosbie also discussed other hot topics in Canberra that affect NFPs, such as the tax treatment of discretionary trusts, pending reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and the impact of gambling reforms.

He said an overarching issue for charities and not-for-profits was the push for stronger legal protections for advocacy.

He said the CCA was closely involved in the Let Charities Speak campaign, while its Australia We Want campaign aimed to highlight the unrecognised work community organisations do.

Appropriately, the webinar featured a Let Charities Speak campaign video and included a short interview with the Melbourne Law School's Professor Matthew Harding explaining the case for better advocacy protection.

The episode also featured a number of short video reports:

• tunnel rescuer Professor Arnold Dix on lessons from crisis leadership
• Charities Minister Andrew Leigh explaining a new national project to support charities
• Fundraising Institute Australasia chief executive Katherine Raskob on donor trends
• new AI tools being pioneered by Uniting Care and the Alcohol and Drug Foundation
• a call by ACOSS president Hang Vo on balancing tech advancements with a human touch.

More information

Watch a full replay here