All charities registered with the ACNC have to meet their ongoing obligations to remain registered.
This webinar explained each obligation, and provided tips and resources to help your charity stay on track.
Webinar transcript
Anne-Marie
Hello and thanks very much for joining us today on our webinar on charities’ ongoing obligations to the ACNC.
I'd like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the lands on which we're presenting today, the Wurundjeri people. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People who are with us. I would also like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the various lands on which everyone is joining us from today.
My name's Anne-Marie and I'm from the ACNC's Education and Public Affairs team. This webinar will provide an overview of the ongoing obligations that registered charities have to the ACNC. We'll also outline the steps that your charity should take to meet them. It'll be helpful to newly registered charities or new board members. It's also an excellent refresher for charities that have been registered for a while.
Now, when you signed up for this webinar, many of you said that you wanted a general overview of ongoing obligations, so we're going to focus on that today. We will cover how to use the ACNC Charity Portal, which is where you'll notify us of any changes to your charity and complete your annual reporting. And we're anticipating that this session will run for no longer than 30 minutes.
Today, I'm joined by Shannon from our Education and Public Affairs team. Thanks for joining us, Shan.
Shannon
Thanks, Anne Marie, and hi everyone. It's great to be here, and I'm really looking forward to taking you through your charity's ongoing obligations today.
Anne-Marie
Thanks, Shan. It's great to have you along.
Before we get started, I'll go through some housekeeping details, which are on the screen now for you. We are using a new platform today, so there might be a few little hiccups. We really appreciate your patience if we do have any tech issues. We'll ask for your feedback at the end of the webinar, so please let us know how you found the platform.
If you're having any issues getting into the webinar, you can try joining from your browser or from a laptop and computer rather than your phone. The important thing to remember is if you do have any trouble with the webinar, don't worry, you're not going to miss anything. We will send you the recording and all of the resources that we refer to after the webinar.
You can also share your feedback by emailing us at education@acnc.gov.au if you have any trouble with any of the polls that we use today or if you think of some feedback after the webinar.
We will be sharing resources today on screen in the slides as part of the presentation and also through the Q&A tool, which is in the menu bar at the top of your screen and it looks like a speech bubble.
If you have any issues accessing the Q&A tool, you can still access the resources through the slides in the presentation and in the email that we'll send to you after the webinar.
Like I said, after the webinar, we'll email you the recording, the slides, and all of the resources we mentioned. So don't worry if you happen to miss a resource link in the Q&A tool today. You'll receive them all afterwards. We'll also pop the webinar, the slides, and the resources on our website and on our YouTube channel in the next few days.
If you've got any general questions on the topic of ongoing obligations during the webinar, click on the Q&A icon in the menu bar at the top of our screen and our team will aim to respond to you directly. We do have a lot of people joining us today, so we won't be able to provide specific advice relevant to your charity or its circumstances.
If you're looking for some more detailed advice related to your charity, contact our Advice team for assistance via phone, email or our online form. And all of those contact details are on our website.
Because there are a large number of people joining us today, we've also turned off the chat and the comments feature.
All right, let's get into learning about your ongoing obligations.
Shannon
Thanks, Anne Marie. All charities have obligations to the ACNC, which they need to meet to remain registered.
Your first obligation is to continue to be a not-for-profit and have a charitable purpose for public benefit. You also need to notify the ACNC of changes to charity details, such as updated contact details or new board members.
We'll show you how to do this in the Charity Portal later in this session.
You need to keep operational and financial records related to your charity. And another obligation is to report to the ACNC annually through completing an Annual Information Statement.
Lastly, you are obligated to comply with the ACNC Governance Standards and External Conduct Standards if your charity operates overseas. We'll go into each obligation shortly in more detail, but first, let's look at why they are important.
Anne-Marie
So it's important for charities to meet their ongoing obligations to the ACNC for a number of reasons. Firstly, it's a requirement for your charity registration. To keep the benefits of registration, such as tax concessions, you need to meet your ongoing obligations. Your ongoing obligations will also help your charity stay on track.
They outline the core steps your charity should be taking, not only to remain registered, but to be well run. Meeting these obligations also supports trust and confidence in the charity sector. And these obligations allow the public, which includes donors, beneficiaries and volunteers, to access
accurate information about your charity and help them understand how a charity should be governed. This fosters a transparent and accountable charity sector.
Before we jump into the detail of your ongoing obligations, it's important to note that your charity may also have obligations to other regulators. These might relate to things like tax concessions, fundraising, or your charity's legal structure.
The ACNC works closely with other regulators to reduce red tape and the administrative burden on charities. We've shared some resources if you want to find out more about other regulators your charity might have and red tape reduction.
Shannon
Let's go into each obligation in a bit more detail, starting with your charity's obligation to maintain its charity status. This one is relatively straightforward. When your charity registered with the ACNC, it needed to demonstrate that it is a not-for-profit and had charitable purposes that are for the public benefit. This obligation requires your charity to continue to meet these standards.
A not-for-profit is generally an organisation that does not operate for the profit, personal gain or other benefit of particular people. For example, its members, the people who run the organisation, or their friends and relatives.
Your charity's purpose is what it was set up to achieve. There are 14 charity subtypes you can be registered with based on your purpose, and your organisation might have more than one. This includes purposes such as advancing health, education and religion.
Your charity's work and purpose may change over time. For example, you might start as an environmental charity registered with the subtype of ‘advancing the natural environment’. Then over time, your charity’s scope expands to ‘protect animals’. You can add and remove charity subtypes over time to reflect your charity's current purpose.
One way you can check if your charity is continuing to be entitled to charity registration is to complete our interactive self-assessment tool. This tool is a great way to check that your charity is meeting its obligations and requirements for registration.
If your charity is no longer eligible to be registered, for example, if your purposes are no longer only charitable, you can voluntarily revoke your charity registration. You can also do this if your charity stops operating altogether and is winding up. We'll show you where to do this in the Charity Portal shortly.
Anne-Marie
There's a few things that you need to notify the ACNC of if you're a registered charity. Most of these updates can be made in the ACNC Charity Portal. We'll show you how to do this in a moment.
You'll need to notify us of changes to your charity's legal name. This is its formal name as it appears on documents. If your name changes, you'll also need to update your governing documents. They're also called your constitution, your rules or trust deed to reflect your new legal name. You also need to tell us about any other changes to your governing document, such as a change to your charity's purpose. You may also need to let other regulators know if you change your governing document.
The next one is your charity's Address For Service. Please make sure that this is an email that you check regularly. The Address For Service should be a generic email that multiple people in your charity can access to make sure you don't miss important reporting reminders or other important messages from the ACNC. If someone's away or leaves your charity, you want to make sure that you're still able to access your charity's Address For Service email. You can update your Address For Service email at any time in the Charity Portal or when you do your annual reporting.
Your Address For Service will also appear with your charity's details on the Register. Charities also need to notify the ACNC if there are any changes to Responsible People, which are your charity's committee or board members, or trustees.
If someone new joins the board or a person leaves, don't forget to update your charity's list of Responsible People.
Like the Address For Service, you can do this anytime in the Charity Portal as well as in your annual reporting. It's really important to keep your Responsible People up to date to make sure that the right people have access to charity information and can use the Charity Portal.
Shannon
You should let us know of these changes as soon as you become aware of them, but within 60 days if your charity is small, or 28 days if your charity is medium or large.
You also need to notify us if you think that your charity has breached the ACNC Act or not complied with an ACNC Governance Standards, or an External Conduct Standard, and as a result, is no longer eligible to be entitled to be registered as a charity or registered under a specific charity subtype.
The timeframe for doing that is 28 days, no matter what your charity size is.
As mentioned earlier, to notify the ACNC about any changes at your charity, you'll first need to log into the Charity Portal, and we'll go through the steps on how to do that now.
You can navigate to the Charity Portal from the ACNC homepage at acnc.gov.au. Look for the Charity Portal login button, which is located at the top right corner of the screen. We'll also put the direct link in the chat.
You may already have an account from when you applied to register your charity, so you can use that. If you don't, you can sign up now. Just make sure you're using your own unique email address, not the generic charity email address. This is because your Portal account belongs to you.
Multiple people at your charity should have their own Charity Portal account, so someone will always have access if they need to update details and report. This could include board members, staff or trustees, or an accountant if you have one.
This is what it looks like when signing into the Charity Portal. If you have any trouble either logging into the Charity Portal or signing up, we've got step-by-step guidance on our website to help you.
Anne-Marie
Now, this is what your Charity Portal will look like when you sign in. You should see your name listed in the top right corner, and your charity's name should also appear under the My Charities heading. If you're involved with more than one charity, you might have multiple charities listed in your Portal account.
If you can't see your charity listed, or another person's name is showing in the top right corner, please refer to the guidance on the Charity Portal help page. You can also contact our helpful Advice team who'll be able to help you with any Charity Portal issues. Click on your charity's name to update your charity details.
The first icon here is Manage Reporting and this is where you go to submit your Annual Information Statement. We'll talk more about this soon when we cover your reporting obligations.
Next, you'll see the Manage People icon, and this is where you can add new Responsible and Authorised People. We mentioned Responsible People earlier. They are your charity's board or committee members or trustees. You can also add and list Authorised People who are not on the board but still have an authority to act on your charity's behalf, such as a CEO.
You could also add an agent, such as a lawyer or accountant, as an Authorised Person.
We have a template that you can use to collect the required information before you add somebody as a Responsible Person at your charity, which we've included in our resources. In ‘Manage people’, you'll also see a list of current Responsible and Authorised People. You can add an end date if the person's left or updated their position. Just remember that if you add an end date because that person has left, they will lose access to the charity in the Portal.
Make sure somebody else has access first before you remove somebody who's left. You can also update your charity's Responsible People in the Annual Information Statement when you're doing your yearly reporting.
In the ‘Manage other charity details’ section of the Charity Portal, you can make updates to a range of things related to your charity details. We're going to go into a bit more detail about other tasks under that icon now.
Clicking into the ‘Manage other charity detail’s section, you'll see a range of icons. The first on the top left is where you go to change your charity's Address For Service. We mentioned this earlier, it's the address where we send your reporting reminders and other important charity information. You can list an email and physical address here.
In addition to your Address For Service, you can also list your general charity contact information. This might be the same address as your Address For Service or a different address. Your general contact information will be published on the Charity Register. You can update these contact details by clicking the last icon, update your charity details.
So, there's one spot for your ACNC contact information and another for your public details.
In this section of the Portal, you can also make other updates, such as to your charity's legal name and governing document.
If your charity is no longer entitled to be registered or your charity stops operating and winds up, you can voluntarily revoke your registration from the Portal. It's important to remember to revoke your ACNC registration if you stop operating. This won't happen automatically if you cancel your ABN or you revoke with another charity regulator, oh, if sorry, if you revoke with another regulator.
Before we move on to the next ongoing obligation, I just want to quickly remind everybody that we do have a lot of people joining us today, so we may be unable to answer all of your questions. The best way to get detailed advice relating to your charity or your circumstances is to contact our Advice team for assistance via phone, email or through our online form.
Those details are available on our website, just search contact us. After the webinar, we'll email you the recording, the slides and all of the resources that we mentioned. So don't worry too much if you happen to miss something. You'll receive everything that's covered in the webinar afterwards.
We'll also pop it up on our website and YouTube channel in the next few days too, so you can share that link with other people in your charity.
Shannon
Let's move now to the next ongoing obligation, which is record-keeping. All charities have a requirement to keep appropriate financial and operational records.
Financial records must record and explain how your charity receives and spends its money or other assets. Your records also need to show your charity's financial position and performance, and allow for true and fair financial statements to be prepared and audited or reviewed, if required.
We'll explain who needs an order or review when we talk about reporting obligations.
Financial records can include things like profit and loss statements, balance sheets, banking records, and an asset register.
Operational records need to demonstrate that your charity is eligible to be registered as a charity and under its charity subtypes. Records also need to show how your charity meets its ACNC obligations and other tax and legal obligations.
Operational records can include your charity's governing documents, meeting minutes, policy and procedure documents, and contracts and agreements.
These are just a few examples. We have a more detailed list on our website that can help you understand which records should be kept.
Anne-Marie
You can keep records in any format you choose, including an electronic format, as long as they're easy to find and access. You can develop your own system or process that makes sense for your charity.
You need to keep the records for seven years and they need to be either in English or in a form that can be easily translated to English. You're not required to provide the records to the ACNC unless asked. If your charity operates overseas, you need to keep records relating to its overseas activities as well.
Shannon
Good record-keeping will make your reporting obligations easier, because you'll have all the information ready to go.
Record-keeping is also important to support charity governance and decision-making.
Poor record-keeping can lead to fraud and financial misconduct, including charity funds being primarily used for the private benefit of its Responsible People, rather than for achieving charitable purposes. It can also mean that things like conflicts of interest are not being documented properly, which can result in poor management and decisions that are not in the charity's best interests.
Let's move on to the next ongoing obligation, which is reporting annually.
Charities must submit an Annual Information Statement, or AIS, every year. Some charities also need to provide a financial report.
Your AIS will be due six months after the end of your reporting period. So if your charity reports for a calendar year, its reporting period will end 31st of December, and your Annual Information Statement will be due by 30 June of the following year. You can have a look on the ACNC Charity Register to see your reporting period and due date.
You can also see your reporting due date when you log into the Charity Portal.
The only charities that don't report to the ACNC are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations registered with the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, or ORIC. These charities instead report directly to ORIC, who then shares information with the ACNC.
Now, we won't go into too much detail about the AIS in our webinar today. We previously held a webinar that covered the full 2025 Annual Information Statement in detail, so you can watch that on our website for more information. We also published a detailed guide about the AIS each year with information about how to answer each question.
Anne-Marie
You can complete your AIS in the Charity Portal in the Manage Reporting section that we mentioned earlier.
The AIS asks about your charity's activities and finances and there'll be questions covering basic charity information, charity programs, employees and volunteers, income, expenses and assets.
As we mentioned earlier, you'll also have the opportunity in the AIS to review your charity's current list of Responsible People, so if you've forgotten to update them, you can add or remove people here.
The exact questions will vary a little depending on your charity's size and its other characteristics. If your charity is small, providing a financial report with the AIS is optional. Large charities need to submit an audited financial report and medium charities need to provide a financial report that's either reviewed
or audited.
Reporting annually is really important for transparency in the charity sector. The information that you provide in your AIS appears on the ACNC Charity Register, unless you meet specific criteria for certain information to be withheld. This allows members of the public, including potential donors, beneficiaries and volunteers, to understand how your charity operates.
The charity program information from your AIS helps even more people find your charity, as you can search based on location, beneficiaries and type of program to find charities.
Shannon
The last ongoing obligation relates to governance, and this includes the ACNC Governance Standards. Charities that operate overseas also need to meet the ACNC External Conduct Standards, which we'll talk about next.
The ACNC Governance Standards are a set of core minimum standards relating to charity governance and how a charity is run, including its processes, activities and relationships. Your charity does not need to submit anything to the ACNC to show that it meets the Governance Standards, but you need to be able to provide evidence of meeting the standards if requested.
Because the Governance Standards are a set of high-level principles instead of precise rules, each charity must decide how it will comply with them. The appropriate steps for your charity might depend on its size, operating locations and activities.
The Governance Standards don't apply to Basic Religious Charities, which are charities with the purpose of advancing religion, which meets 6 specific criteria.
There are 6 standards. The first standard requires your charity to demonstrate that it is a not-for-profit with a charitable purpose. We spoke more about this earlier when talking about maintaining your charity status.
Governor's Standard 2 requires charities to take reasonable steps to be accountable to their members and allow their members adequate opportunities to raise concerns about how the charity is run.
One way you might meet this standard is by having an annual general meeting or AGM each year.
If your charity doesn't have members, such as trusts, this standard doesn't apply.
Under the third standard, your charity must not commit a serious offence, such as fraud, under any Australian law or breach a law that may result in a penalty of 60 penalty units or more.
Standard 4 requires your charity to take reasonable steps to cheque its Responsible People aren't disqualified by ASIC or the ACNC and remove anyone who is ineligible.
Governor Standard 5 outlines the key duties of Responsible People. These duties include acting with reasonable care and diligence and always behaving honestly and fairly in the best interests of the charity and to help further its charitable purposes.
Responsible People must not misuse their position or any information they obtain through their role, and they are required to identify and disclose any conflicts of interest. They also have a responsibility to ensure the charity's financial affairs are managed responsibly and to make sure the organisation does not continue to operate while it's insolvent.
And the last standard relates to joining the National Redress Scheme, if the circumstances require it.
Anne-Marie
Charities that operate overseas must also comply with the ACNC External Governance Standards, External Conduct Standards, sorry. Operating outside Australia can include sending money, resources or staff overseas, conducting activities overseas and more.
Basic Religious Charities need to meet these standards if they operate overseas, even if they don't need to meet the Governance Standards.
There are four External Conduct Standards. Standard 1 covers the way a charity manages its activities overseas, how it's required to control the finances and other resources it uses overseas, and the requirement to comply with Australian laws.
Standard 2 requires your charity to obtain and keep sufficient records for its overseas activities on a country-by-country basis.
Standard 3 is about combating fraud and corruption, so having processes and procedures in place.
And Standard 4 requires your charity to protect the vulnerable people that it works with when conducting its overseas operations. We have videos about all of these standards on our websites if you want to learn more, and we also have quizzes to test your knowledge.
Shannon
That brings us to the end of our webinar. We've covered off each of the ongoing obligations for your charity and hopefully answered some of your questions in the process.
We'd love to get a sense of how much this webinar has contributed to your understanding of ongoing obligations, so we have put a poll in the chat now. If you can provide a response, we'd really appreciate it.
Now, I know we've covered a lot of information in our webinar today, so we're just going to leave you with a few key takeaways of what you should be thinking about right now.
The number one thing you should be doing right now is making sure you have access to the Charity Portal. When you log in, you should see your own name in the top right corner, not the name of someone else at your charity.
And under the heading My Charities, you should see your charity's name. If you need help, you can visit the Portal help page using the link we've shared in the chat, or call our Advice team on 13 22 62 from 1pm to 5pm Victorian time.
Remember, the Charity Portal is where you notify the ACNC of changes in your charity and also submit your AIS, so it's incredibly important that you can access this.
The second tip is know when your AIS is due. You can see this in the Portal or on your charities page on the Register.
Our Advice team can also help you if you get stuck. And third, keep records. Charities are required to keep operational and financial records and having this information handy when it comes time to submitting your AIS will make the process so much easier.
The final thing to remember is the importance of a handover process at your charity. If you leave, it is vitally important that you pass on what you know about your charity's ongoing obligations to someone else. Check out our charity's handover checklist and contact our team if you get stuck.
Anne-Marie
We've provided lots of links to resources today to help you with your ongoing obligations and within the next day or two you'll receive an email from us with the recording of the webinar, the slides that we've used and the resources that we've mentioned as well. Feel free to share that email with other people in your charity to make sure that everyone's aware of their ongoing obligations.
If you have any questions, you can contact us on 13 22 62 from 1pm to 5pm Victorian time on weekdays. You can also keep up to date with ACNC information by subscribing to our newsletter or by following us on social media. The details are up on the screen now.
Shannon
We'd really love to hear your feedback, so we're going to put up a quick poll on the chat to help us continue to improve our work. We've tried a new platform today, and we'd love your feedback on that. If you can respond using the poll on the chat, we'd really appreciate it. You can also share your feedback with us via our email, education@acnc.gov.au
Thank you to team members Maria, Julie, Gabby and Bre for helping with the questions coming through the chat and Anne Marie for co-hosting today. Thanks again for joining us to learn about your ongoing obligations to the ACNC. Have a great day.