Come with me my excited crowd-funders and weary fundraisers.*

You might be a little bamboozled by all the different state fundraising rules and regulations. With over 20 entirely different ones Australia-wide, it certainly has become nightmare for those trying to raise some coin. But alas, it wasn't always like this.

Let’s take a journey back in time. The year is 1813 and the Colony of New South Wales is a mere 25 years old. With a population of some 13000 people, the government is already facing a deep crisis, having little provision for the ever increasing number of needy, sick and destitute people.

Edward Smith Hall, an evangelical Christian, was deeply affected by the downtrodden and distressed in the tiny colony, and frustrated by the failure of government to remedy the situation. His response that year was to establish Australia’s first charity, The NSW Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Benevolence, which in 1818 was renamed to what we now know today as The Benevolence Society. Its sole aim was:

To relieve the Poor, the Distressed, the Aged, the Infirm and thereby discountenance, as much as possible, Mendacity and Vagrancy, and to encourage industrious habits amongst indigent poor, as well as afford them religious instruction and consolation in their distresses.

Funds for the relief work of the society were raised by direct appeals to the more well to do in the colony, with some additional funds provided by the Government. A reading of the Society's first accounts of 1814 notes that £163 in donations were raised (about $15,000 in today’s currency) and the same amount disbursed. One example of the society's altruism in that year was to a man described as “an extreme object of distress, afflicted with a complication of diseases without friend or home”.

Sounds like me on a bad day. The resulting kindness that ensued to this wretched soul was recorded as, “a shirt, pair of trowsers (sic), one blanket, tea, arrowroot and two loaves weekly from time to time until his death.”

Yet this was one example among more than 200 that required urgent attention in the Benevolence Society’s inaugural year. Governor Macquarie was so impressed by the society that in 1818 he became their first Patron.

The Society’s altruistic mantra meant that it was always inundated with requests yet it steadfastly went about its business decade after decade with hard work, common sense and compassion. The records and ledgers kept were simple, and involved little interference or red tape from government. The society was a great success!

But colonies across this new country morphed into the current federation of states, each wishing to impose their own laws on how funds could be raised by their respective residents. Remarkably, much of this fundraising legislation has changed very little since its implementation.

Australian charity law academic, Professor Myles McGregor-Lowndes (Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies) notes:

“Fundraising regulation fails on so many fronts that some State Governments ought to be ashamed at their lack of diligence in assuring that the provision are fit for purpose.”

Indeed, when one takes a cursory glance at the cornucopia of strange laws and regulations that wait in store, ready to ambush fundraising organisations - people who simply want to get on with the task of performing deeds for the greater good of this country.

I invite you to peruse some of these 'gems' from our current laws and regulations.

For example:

Western Australia’s Street Collections Regulations 1999 still notes that “collection boxes must not be fixed to a pole designed to be held beyond the reach of the collector”. This refers to the long forgotten approach of eliciting donations from people in horse-drawn carriages who could not be reached from street level. Lordy me it's 2016!

The regulations also rather awkwardly state that, “if a person wishes to contribute to a collection a collector must offer a collection box to the person so the person can put the contribution into the box”. I mean really...regulatory instructions on collection box etiquette?





Victoria’s Fundraising Regulations 2009 requires rather precisely that, “Identifying badges used when fundraising must ensure that the badge only contains lettering or numbers with a height not less than 4 millimetres”. Is 4mm really going to be that prominent?

New South Wales Fair Trading’s Charitable Fundraising Authority Conditions requests that where appeals for goods are conducted by way of collection bins or bags that each bag, must bear the words “charity operated” or “commercially operated” in a clearly visible position. The print must be in capital letters, in Helvetica, Arial or similar font style, and not less than 5 millimetres in height, and in black and white in a format that the conditions actually prescribe images too. Who would have thought a simple collection bag could be so mind boggling!

Tasmania requires specific dates if you want a licence; Queensland has exacting advertising requirements for any public notices; the ACT needs to know in advance the amount you are going to raise; while Western Australia and Victoria require police checks to be undertaken of officers applying for a licence. The Northern Territory has done the most sensible thing... and not even bothered with fundraising laws or regulations!

Western Australia’s Charitable Collections Regulations imposes grand fines of between $8 and $40 to anyone who acts in contravention of any of the regulations. Hmmm...$8, looks like 10 minutes of busking will earn you the penalty amount. So if you’re unlicensed in WA, there is little disincentive. The penalties in other jurisdictions are also rather underwhelming.

Is it any wonder that those at the not-for-profit coal-face have called out for simplification and nationally consistent fundraising laws for decades. As Michael Thorn, Chief Executive of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) states:

“The regulation of fundraising needs to be fixed. The current system is archaic – a relic of another century. As a charity that manages its fundraising in-house, it should not be this hard for FARE to operate nationally. Governments need to focus on what is important and not protecting out-of-date state-based systems.”

Troublingly, when there are serious infringements that cross state borders, the state regulators have to apply different laws to the same actions with only modest fines (at best) in their tool kit. There are clear signs emerging that state regulators don’t want to be toothless tigers with out-of-step state regulations and tiny fines, particularly when faced with serial fundraising fraudsters.

In the recent case involving the angelic Belle Gibson and Penguin Australia, the state regulator, Consumer Affairs Victoria, chose to prosecute under the local version of the Australian Consumer Law, rather than their own Fundraising Act (Vic). After all, what was the logic of using state based laws and regulations, as Ms Gibson’s misleading and deceptive conduct through her dodgy app, and 'snake oil soup' cookbook, occurred Australia-wide. More importantly, with fundraising increasing being done over the internet by crowd-funders and and the like, there seems little sense is having a myriad of different state-based funding acts and regulations.

One lobby group feels that our Australian Consumer Law, with a little bit of tweaking, would be an easier legal 'guidebook' for fundraisers to follow, whether big organisation or those involved in a one off crowdfunding. The main reason is because it's principles based rather than prescriptive like the current fundraising laws. After all, misrepresentation and misleading conduct is what it is.

Times have changed, and for fundraisers the prevailing years have left them with a veritable minefield of out of date laws and regulations that are at times archaic or complex and negligible penalties that have made regulators toothless tigers in fighting any future fraudsters on the fundraising front.

I would like to leave you with the words of Ken Burnett, noted author of Relationship Fundraising, who poignantly notes:

"There are two ‘i’s’ in Fundraising – they should stand for inspiration and innovation, not imitation and irritation."





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* This post is loosely based on my forthcoming article in The Third Sector magazine.





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