Over the past few months, the east coast of Australia has been
battered by rain and floods. Thousands of Australians have been
affected, leading to a number of organisations and charities
raising funds to assist those impacted. In July 2021, the Federal
Government sought feedback from stakeholders on the implementation
of a voluntary code to improve the transparency of the use of
charitable donations during natural disasters. This Code would
provide charities who choose to sign up with a framework for
transparent reporting of disaster recovery fundraising and
activities.
During the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/20, charities were
criticised for a failure to provide adequate transparency as to
where donations were going as well as not delivering donations to
affected communities in a shorter timeframe. The potential
implementation of this code would seek to address this issue by
improving accountability to donors through reporting of the use of
donations in response
