ACNC releases annual report
The Australian Charities and Not-for-profit Commission (ACNC) has released its annual report. More than 60 000 registered Australian charities are eligible for Commonwealth charity tax concessions and must go through the ACNC before being granted reductions. It is the second annual report of the ACNC and the first time the report has been submitted to Parliament.
ACNC Commissioner Susan Pascoe AM said she was proud of the work the ACNC had achieved in meeting the regulator’s legislative objections, and preparedness of the sector to work with the ACNC.
“The ACNC has worked hard over this year to refine our ‘report once, use often’ approach and respond to the sector that has been calling for effective regulation and reporting for more than two decades,” said Ms Pascoe.
Additionally, 25 000 governing documents and 7000 financial reports were voluntarily submitted and published by charities over the year. Ms Pascoe was pleased to note the that 3.6 million views to the acnc.gov.au website and more than 300 000 views of the Charity Register supported the creation of the Charity Register as clearly the Australian public were keen to find information about charities online.
“As Australia’s first independent regulator of charities, we have been well placed to help protect nearly $70 million in charitable assets through monitoring and where necessary, investigating charities during the year,” said Ms Pascoe.
Ms Pascoe also credited the cooperative and effective working relationships the ACNC had formed with the Australian Tax Office and Australian Federal Police, as well as other agencies in the monitoring and investigating of charities, resulting in the protection of charities at risk of funding terrorist activities overseas.
Highlights of the ACNC 2014 Annual Report include:
- Enhancing the national Charity Register, including advances search techniques and identifying and removing hundreds of inactive charities from the Register
- The registration of 3 141 new charities
- Launch of the Charity Passport to reduce red tape by proving charities’ information collected by the ACNC to other government agencies
- Taking responsibility for the ongoing maintenance and updating of the National Standard Chart of Accounts (NSCOA) which provides a common approach to capturing accounting information
- Clarifying the legal definition of charity to recognise charitable purposes such as protection, advocacy, research and awareness-raising.
- Likewise, the Charity Register has been updated to include new subtypes to reflect these changes. Over the coming month, the ACNC will work with charities to ensure that their records in the Charity Register reflect the newly defined purposes.
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