About the organisation
An organisation that worked to raise awareness of certain diseases – as well as reduce the stigma around these conditions – applied to the ACNC for registration as a charity.
About the application
The organisation sought registration with the subtypes ‘advancing health’, and as a ‘Health Promotion Charity’.
A Health Promotion Charity (HPC) is one of the charity subtypes that can be registered with the ACNC.
HPC has a specific meaning in law, and is defined as ‘a charitable institution whose principal activity is to promote the prevention or the control of diseases in human beings’.
Importantly, there is a distinction between the description of an HPC and that of a charity with the purpose of ‘advancing health’.
The description of an HPC sets out the requirements of ‘promoting the prevention or control of diseases’, whereas ‘advancing health’ includes ‘preventing and relieving sickness, disease or human suffering’ more broadly.
HPCs are eligible for charity tax concessions and often apply to the Australian Taxation Office for endorsement as a deductible gift recipient (DGR) and for fringe benefits tax exemption.
For more information, see our Commissioner's Interpretation Statement: Health Promotion Charities.
Its application contained a description of its work, which focused on online awareness-raising through videos and blogs that told stories centring on people living with the diseases it worked to raise awareness of.
About the registration process
After receiving the application, the ACNC asked the organisation to provide further information. A key part of our request centred on the need to learn more detail about the organisation’s current and future activities.
An organisation that wishes to be registered as a charity with the HPC subtype must show that its ‘principal activity’ meets the description of an HPC. This means its primary activity must be directed towards promoting the prevention or control of diseases.
As set out in our Commissioner's Interpretation Statement (CIS) on HPCs, an organisation’s ‘principal activity’ is its ‘main’ or ‘predominant activity’.
However, our HPC CIS also makes it clear that an organisation’s principal activity does not have to take up the majority (more than 50%) of its time and resources.
In fact, an organisation’s principal activity only needs to be that which:
‘takes up a greater share of the organisation’s time and money than each of its other activities.’
For example, an organisation could spend 40% of its time and money on one activity, 35% on another and 25% on a third.
In this scenario, the activity taking up 40% of the organisation’s time and resources is its principal activity, even if the organisation does not devote more than 50% of its time and resources to it.
An organisation’s description of its activities provides the ACNC with important context on what its principal activity might be.
Other information we may consider include the organisation’s:
- governing document
- annual reports
- financial statements and budgets
- meeting minutes and agendas
- operational, strategic or business plans
- records about the allocation of time for staff and volunteers
- website and other publicly available communications, including social media posts.
In response to our request, the organisation provided a detailed description of its current and intended activities.
It outlined its work around educating and informing the public of the diseases it focused on – including the creation and provision of several educational resources.
It also described the work it did to highlight the issues concerning these diseases, and to reduce the stigma that accompanied them. It added that this work to reduce stigma would also encourage people to seek medical care or treatment.
It also outlined intended future activities, which indicated a continued emphasis on work consistent with that of a charity eligible to be registered with the HPC subtype.
Importantly, the organisation included figures – breakdowns in time and money allocated to each part of this work and how each part of the work promoted the prevention or control of the medical conditions it focused on.
These figures indicated that the organisation’s work towards promoting the prevention or control of these conditions was its principal activity.
Outcome
In analysing this further information, the ACNC was satisfied the organisation’s work was consistent with the charitable purposes of advancing health, and of an HPC.
The ACNC then registered the charity with these subtypes.