Fundraising and philanthropy

The Office for the Community Sector (OCS) seeks to establish dialogue between community organisations, philanthropic organisations and businesses to examine the issues surrounding non-government support for community organisations.

• Presentation by Lynne Wannan, OCS Director, to Philanthropy Australia: Building Relationships Between Philanthropy and Government (Word 167 KB) or (PPT 986 KB)

• During 2009, Victorian community sector organisations dealt with two significant events that placed them under pressures never before experienced – the global financial crisis and the Black Saturday bushfires. There When Needed (PDF 1.9 MB) or (Word 95 KB) includes case studies of the experiences of some of these organisations, the ways they worked alongside the community to cope with these pressures and the lessons they learnt along the way.

Business

Business Partnerships

• Community Sector and Business Partnerships Guide (PDF 782 KB) or (Word 410 KB)
• Community Sector and Business Partnerships Toolkit (PDF 514 KB) or (Word 89 KB)

This self-guided resource is designed to be used in a group discussion or workshop situations with NFP organisations, businesses, local governments and service clubs. It can assist when you are considering if and how to embark on a community/ business relationship. It provides a step-by-step approach to assist you in knowing where you are heading and what is involved along the way.

Workplace Giving

• Establishing a Workplace Giving Relationship with Business (PDF 322 KB) or (Word 129 KB)

This guide for NFP organisations, provides advice on how to make the most of pre-tax workplace giving schemes and tips on how to develop a mutually beneficial corporate partnership.

A workplace giving scheme is an arrangement between a NFP organisation and a business to enable the employees of the business to donate to the community organisation. The benefits of workplace giving schemes are two-way, both for NFP organisations and for the businesses that sign up.

Note: To become a recipient of a workplace giving scheme, your organisation must first have deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. To find out more about DGR visit the Australian Taxation Office website.

More resources are below to assist you:

Philanthropy

Philanthropic engagement

Government and philanthropic grant makers both provide funding to not-for-profit community organisations. Both government and philanthropy recognise that value and efficiency can be added when they work collaboratively.

The OCS has engaged with Philanthropy Australia and some of Victoria’s prominent philanthropic grant makers with an interest in working with government to learn more about working collaboratively. A series of case studies have been developed on three way relationships between philanthropy, government and the NFP community sectors:

• Case study City of Hume - Developing Children Project (Word 33 KB)
• Case study Loddon Mallee Government- Philanthropic Partnership (Word 112 KB)
• Case study Whitelion Mentoring Program (Word 36 KB)
• Case study Children’s Protection Society (Word 112 KB)

The result of the work is the publication:

• Guiding Principles for Collaboration between Government and Philanthropy- Report and Case Studies (Word 403 KB)
• Brochure (PDF 1.2 MB) or (Word 198 KB)

Community Foundations

A community foundation is an independent public charitable foundation, which enables individuals, families, like minded groups or corporations within a community to establish a charitable fund under its tax deductible umbrella.

A community foundation seeks to build permanent corpus of locally held funds to support local communities. Community foundations are dedicated to strengthening local communities, creating opportunities and tackling issues of disadvantage and exclusion.

To strengthen the capacity of community foundations in Victoria, the OCS provided funding to ten community foundations from 2009 – 2012. Each received a 'challenge' grant of $100,000 and subject to matching this grant through fundraising, an additional grant of $200,000 would be provided. To date, seven of these community foundations have received the further $200,000 funding. A mid-project evaluation revealed that the program not only strengthened the capacity of foundations through developing the funds, but was successful in strengthening board capacity, fundraising ability and increasing profile for the foundations.

The OCS has completed 10 case studies- on different approaches used by community foundations to build a corpus. These have been developed to share ideas and lessons on how to raise funds for community foundations and other NFP organisations:

Funds Development for Community Foundations (PDF 301 KB) or (Word 73 KB)

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