Charities Crisis Cabinet takes fix fundraising fight into its own hands

A survey will be released every six months detailing how much and how little states and territories are doing to support charity fundraising activity  

In a bid to overhaul the current fundraising laws, charity leaders have launched a new survey that will expose and highlight the fundraising barriers organisations are facing under the current regulations. 

Launched by the Charities Crisis Cabinet earlier this month, the survey will highlight which state and territory governments are making progress in fundraising red tape, and which are not. 

The survey will be repeated every six months, and researchers will use the data to provide a national scoreboard of states and territories that are supporting charities and those that are not.

Charity advocates have long fought for the repeal of fragmented state and territory fundraising laws, and the implementation of a nationally consistent model for regulating fundraising activities.

In September, a proposal was put forward by the Charitable Fundraising National Working Group to allow a charity registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) to be automatically given authority to fundraise in all participating Australian states and territories.

This would mean charities no longer need to complete an individual application process in each jurisdiction – making it much easier to conduct online appeals across the country.

But in November, a report following the Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements argued the legal framework could be more effective if there was a single regulator and scheme governing fundraising. 

Advocates were hopeful this would mean a national scheme could be decided on by the end of 2020, but they were left without a result.   

Charities have until 16 April to fill out the survey, which can be found here.