Vision Australia welcomes the positive debate around the current red tape requirements for government funding that has been highlighted in the January 13 opinion article in The Australian by The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.
Vision Australia is a national not-for-profit disability services provider delivering much needed services to the community. Each year we provide services to around 33,000 Australians.
In 2012-13 we spent over $85 million delivering services, of which 37% funding was derived from government sources, with 45% coming from important community and corporate support including legacies, bequests and donations.
Both streams of funding are used to deliver services to people who are blind or have low vision. Unfortunately, each dollar derived from these different sources requires different levels of compliance, adding to our administrative burden and driving up the cost of service delivery.
A significant amount of support cost is required to comply with the condition of government funding compared to that received through trusts and foundations. Government funding requires service reporting, financial reporting, quality service audits – red tape that erodes the amount of resources that can be applied to services.
For Vision Australia, on an annual basis for government funding:
- For service reporting - a total of approximately 640 electronic data reports and 30 narrative reports are submitted to meet contractual requirements against government funded programs.
- For financial reporting – a minimum of 32 funded programs that require a mix of quarterly, six monthly and/or annual financial reporting. On these, audits are conducted on each funding stream and annual financial acquittals are signed off by external auditors. Nearly 50 financial acquittals and/or expenditure statements need to be submitted.
- Audits - Timing of these audits can be a combination of annual, 18 monthly and/or three yearly.
The financial cost of managing government grants (1.7% of grant revenue) is currently 3 times the cost of administering the revenue received from trusts, foundations and major gifts (0.5%).
The red tape and administration of grant income significantly erodes the amount of resources that can be applied to services and a simplification of the requirements would add considerable value to Vision Australia.
The full opinion article by The Hon Josh Frydenberg can be found at the following link - http://www.joshfrydenberg.com.au/guest/opinionDetails.aspx?id=136
It’s time to simplify requirements and cut red tape for the disability sector.
For more information about our services go online to the following link: www.visionaustralia.org/annualreports