CARE

“CARE Australia is an Australian charity and international humanitarian aid organisation fighting
global poverty, with a special focus on empowering women and girls to bring lasting change to
their communities.” (www.care.org.au)

As an international organisation CARE seeks to provide hope, stress tolerance and social justice, while helping those who through poverty have been denied dignity and security. They aim to serve individuals and families in the poorest communities in the world providing economic opportunities, influencing policy decisions at all levels of government, addressing discrimination and strengthening a community’s capacity for self-help.  

As a non-religious and non-political organisation CARE focuses on working with women and girls to bring lasting change to their communities through the confederation composed of 14 national members. This forms one of the world’s largest independent, international emergency relief and development assistance organisations.

Transparency

For any large organisation raising funds from the public or government, transparency in all aspects of business is essential. CARE has large amounts of comprehensive information for ongoing projects, financial accounts and how the public can further help them achieve their goals. They provide telephone and fax numbers for additional information along with email, Facebook and Twitter accounts for updates on their works around the world. Given this, a score of 9/10 is given for the transparency of the corporation.

Social Impact

CARE Australia is an international humanitarian aid organisation, as such they are heavily involved with third world countries. Their resources are used in conjunction with CARE’s other national sectors to cover 5% of the African continent, 77% of the Asian Pacific and the remaining 18% in countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, Jordan, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen.

In these areas CARE works with the people helping them to set up education services, improve health and increase their income, leading to a self-sufficient and improved loving condition for all.

The great work and change they are bringing to so many cannot be underestimated, 9/10.

See table below for a further break down of expenditure.

Expenditure/Donation ratio

In the last financial year CARE worldwide raised $64,746,294 in revenues from donations, AusAID, foreign government and CARE international members. This is a staggering amount of money in which 90% made it directly to the third world.

Administration costs have only ever varied by 1% over the last three years resulting in a 5% expense for the 09/10 financial year. That equates to over $3.2 million alone. All fund raising activities, advertisements and local community education makes up the remaining 5% expenditure for the year.

Rating of 8/10

With an overall score of 26/30 we at 1DonationCentre rate the CARE organisation as one of the best. It is highly transparent in its entirety and brings unequalled social change to those who are in desperate need of it. 

Mark, 1DC

The Australian Red Cross Analysis

The Australian Red Cross has over 100 million volunteers worldwide with 60,000 members in Australia alone. They pride themselves on being able to help people in times of crisis and care for those unable to themselves. From 2008-2009 The Australian Red Cross has responded to 257 emergencies and assisted 89,764 people, in their disaster/emergency area. They had also helped 4,328 people in the healthcare area and many, many more people in other areas such as youth services, education and first aid services. Currently their major projects are the Japan and Pacific Disaster Appeal, Victorian Floods Appeal and New Zealand Earthquake Appeal. How does the Australian red Cross compare with other charities based on our criteria?? Read on to find out….

Transparency

The Australian Red Cross is a very transparent charity with detailed information on their website about current project and even past projects. They have many contact options such as e-mail, telephone and even a head office for each of their different branches so you can talk to them in person. They also have a facebook, twitter, youtube and linked-in page to reach the community and on top of this they provide annual reports and financial statements, leaving no information to the imagination. I give them a 10/10 for this criterion.

Social Impacts over last 12 months

Over the past 12 months the Australian Red Cross has been actively involved in the community with 93% of their projects funded being in Australia and 7% being international. Some of their projects included the Victoria Bushfire Appeal, Blood donation service, Asia quake and tsunami relief and other programs. I give them a 7/10 for this criterion.

Expenditure-to-Actual donation ratio

The Australian Red Cross in the year 2010 received a total income of $797,473 from government grants, community support, appeals and other sources. From this they spent a total of $704,185 for the year, of this $704,185 only 4% or $28,167 of their expenditure for the year was used on administration costs, while the other 96% went straight into their charity work. I give them an 8/10 for this criterion.

Overall the Australian Red Cross is a fantastic charity that is very transparent, is fairly active within the community and has a good expenditure-to-donation ratio, with only 4% of their money going to administration costs. I give the Australian Red Cross a high score of 25/30.

Happy Donating ;) 

David, 1DC

The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia (RFDS)

“Using the latest in aviation, medical and communications technology, it delivers
extensive primary health care and 24-hour emergency service to those who live, work and
travel throughout Australia (Effectively covering 80% of Australia’s land mass). Today,
the RFDS has a fleet of 53 aircraft operating from 21 bases located across the nation and
provides medical assistance to over 270,000 people every year – that’s one every two
minutes.” (http://www.flyingdoctor.org.au/About-Us/)

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) is a not-for-profit organisation. While heavily
supported by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, the RFDS relies partly
on fundraising and donations from the community to purchase and medically-equip its
aircraft and to finance other major capital initiatives, such as the new Non-emergency Patient
Transfer Service set up in March of this year as a joint exercise by the South-Eastern Section
and VIC divisions of the RFDS. Which aims to provide a fast, secure option for patients
requiring non-urgent hospital transfers in Victoria and to assist Air Ambulance Victoria
by handling the non-urgent cases that may end up as emergency cases this also reduces the
pressure put on roads and traffic entering major city centres as well as assisting Hospitals
with the provision of safe and efficient services to patients. As an initiative only implemented
recently it shows the continuing development of the RFDS in Australia and the need for it
to adapt to the changing needs of customers. Therefore they score moderate to high on the
initiatives of the last 12 months.

Score of 8.5/10

The level of transparency is very high at the RFDS with compliance to all organisation
regulations specifically the access granted to financial reports, through the year end Annual
reports is a must of any organisation. And the reports provided are concise and well organised
although they do not display the annual salary of the Chief Executive Officer and Boards
of each division of the organisation. They do provide sufficient details to ensure that
those donating understand that a significant level of donation comes from the Australian
state and federal governments in order to provide this essential service and that there is
still a significant although small in comparison level of funds coming from donations by
ordinary citizens. The only are of concern for potential donators is the continued purchase of
residential buildings for use by the RFDS, this may be a concern and specifically a diversion
from the traditional business model. Otherwise they score moderately high although all
information has been provided to meet government regulations it still makes it a valid act of
transparency.

Score of 8.4/10

This also encapsulates some aspects of the final criteria for analysis the expenditure-to-actual
donation ratio which for the RFDS is: Example of how the cash flow is for the RFDS, bear in
mind that this only covers the Central Operations.
It is clear that the level of financing need to run the organisation is substantial
although they have made a 12 million dollar profit that will most likely be redistributed to
wages or the expansion of the organisation into new areas as well as the purchase of new
planes and equipment or keep in cash to maintain the budget for the following year. The
ratio from this works out to be 0.24% of expenditure is covered by donations. Although
the allocation of this cash could see none of it going into the tackling of costs and all going
straight into the bank but this would depend on many other factors such as the spread of
donations across the financial year and the urgency of funds. Also this end Net cash may be
redistributed to certain divisions based on their needs for new planes and etc. 2.6 million in
liabilities from employee benefits.

Score of 8/10 variable due to the nature of economic activity.

Total score is 24.9/30 which is Moderate/High and a very good score for any organisation

Welcome to 1DonationCentre, we here at 1DC will help provide you with an honest and informative look at many different charities to help you to determine just which charity is for YOU. We at 1DC have come up with a criteria based ranking system to help make this choice easier. All of our charitable partners will be assessed and ranked on 3 core criteria; the transparency of the organization, the social impacts of the organization over the past 12 months and finally the expenditure-to-actual donation ratio. All these criteria will be assessed and a mark for each of them will be given out of 10, therefore enabling us to then rank an organization out of a possible 30 points. The first of these criteria helps to determine just how open the organization is with its financial and business information with a more transparent organization sharing financials and business related information whilst a less transparent one would not share any financials and just provide the basic business contact information. The social impact of the organization over the past 12 months is a very important criterion as it will help to determine just how active the charity is with community involvement with the better charities running many programs over a 12 month period. The last of these criteria is the expenditure-to-actual donation ratio which reveals just how much of the money a charity raises goes to the cause they are promoting and how much of it goes to internal costs of running the charity.

Over the next few weeks you can look forward to in depth discussions of charities and also updates on current disasters happening in the world which our staff here at 1DC will be posting up.

Happy Donating ;)

David, 1DC