The Productivity Commission has released its anticipated “Future foundations for giving” report which considers “the way philanthropic funding is provided is as relevant as the quantity of funding.”

“Philanthropy can be ‘practiced’ in different ways and the decisions philanthropic organisations make about their funding approaches influence the effectiveness of philanthropy and can contribute to improved outcomes for the wider community. Ensuring that philanthropic practices continue to evolve, where necessary, to meet the changing needs and expectations of charities and the community is an essential part of a thriving philanthropic and charitable sector.”

The report contains numerous findings and recommendations, covering areas such as:

• Reform of the ‘deductible gift recipient’ (DGR) system that determines which charities can receive tax deductible donations
• Bolstering the regulation of charities and ancillary funds
• Improving public information sources about charities and giving

Australians Investing In Women was honoured to be interviewed by the Productivity Commission for its review and referenced seven times in the report’s considerations and recommendations including:

“A common theme from participants was that there is a role for the philanthropic sector to adopt more inclusive giving practices. For example, Australians Investing In Women said: We’ve currently got legislation, the Federal Sex Discrimination Act that prevents discrimination on the basis of gender. We’ve got regulation around measuring the gender pay gap through the Workplace Gender Equality Act. We don’t have any sort of authority or regulation that says in philanthropy, ‘You should really look at gender equality as a core issue’. (trans., p. 450)

Australians Investing in Women also suggested that philanthropy should elevate applying a gender lens to giving as best practice, and that the corporate sector is generally better at doing this than other types of donors such as foundations (trans., p. 453).

We thank and congratulate the Australian Government and the Productivity Commission on this important piece of work and look forward to continuing to work with the sector to support more and better giving.

To access the report and its findings in full visit the Productivity Commission website.