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CCA CEO David Crosbie says Australia needs to create an option for not-for-profits to invest in themselves to become stronger as organisations. We’d like to see us follow the lead from the United Kingdom. What they have done is identify monies which are lying dormant in bank accounts, superannuation funds and insurance funds for more than 20 years and they are using that to underwrite establishment of what they are calling a ‘Big Society Bank’, which is really a not-for-profit bank.

It may be a century or three too late for many community organisations who have not been able to be classified as charities, but the Gillard government is finally doing what no Australia government has been prepared to do – define what it is to be a 21st century charitable organisation in Australia. 

“We welcome the commitment of Labor to establish an Office for the Not-for-Profit Sector,” CCA Chair and World Vision CEO, Reverend Tim Costello, said. “This was a key recommendation of the Productivity Commission and will play an important role in having consistency across the nation and across government. This is the first time that the sector has had a single reference point within Government.”

‘Community organisations are tired of jumping through bureaucratic hoops that provide no useful information and serve no useful purpose. Despite the fact that the not-for profit sector contributes $43 billion to Australia’s economy, the needs of the sector have largely been ignored by governments in the past,’ according to David Crosbie, CEO of the Community Council of Australia.