Financial Impact

The financial results of Hands Across Canberra Group are a consolidation of the operations of 3 entities:

• Hands Across Canberra Ltd
• The Public Ancillary Trust Fund
• The Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund Ltd

Summary results for 2024/25

Notes: Note 1: Excludes inter-entity charges; Note 2: Includes Named Funds receipts ($570,178) to build the long-term Perpetual Fund to support charities, Net gain on investments ($182,566)

The results for 2024/25 reflected a consolidation of activities with continuing support for the Canberra Day Appeal, a new initiative with the Fun Run, as well as a very successful End of Financial Year Appeal. The Named Funds initiative continues to grow in respect to ongoing contribution to existing Funds plus 3 new Named Funds during the year. The overall balance in these Named Funds has now grown to $2.16 million.

The Canberra Day Appeal built on previous year’s results generating a combined $843,779 in donations and matching funds. This was achieved through the combined efforts of the participating charities and corporate sponsors. The Canberra Day Appeal is establishing itself as known annual philanthropic event to support Canberra’s Charities and reflects the Canberra community continued generosity.

Our major grant collaborative grant round for the year — through the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund in conjunction with the Snow Foundation, the John James Foundation, the Aspen Foundation and Aspen Medical — allowed an injection into the not-for-profit sector of almost $2m. The Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund contribution was $393,286.

Over the past five years we have established an End of Financial Year Appeal so that community members can consider donating to Hands Across Canberra and linked charities as part of their donation considerations for their financial year planning. In this past financial year, we have seen a significant increase in donations as part of this End of Financial Year Appeal to Hands Across Canberra, the many Other Charities that are linked to us through our webpage and towards increasing Named Funds. Overall across all sources we saw over $547,000 donated June 2024 with the main beneficiaries being linked charities $100,655 (annual total $242,394), Named Funds $369,120annual total $570,178) and General Donations $69,329.

The ACT Government provided a generous contribution of $750,000 to the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund in 2022/23 to support the purchase of land for the next charity house project. These funds are held in Trust within the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund whilst initiating the project.  Land has now been identified, and action was taken with the Suburban Land Agency to identify a suitable block of land for acquisition. Relations with both the Master Builders Federation and Leemhuis Construction have been established to undertake preliminary building design and building cost estimation.

Overall, during the 2024/25 financial year, the Hands Across Canberra Group provided direct funding to charities of $1.35m which is lower than in 2023/24 as the previous year there was a special once-off distribution of $380,225 from proceeds from the sale of the  Strathairn Charity House. During the year there was a further mobilization of $1.7m in conjunction with partner foundations in the ACT to provide a total of over $3m to local charities.

The Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund provided substantial contributions for the year, with a total injection of $897,480 in support of Hands Across Canberra activities, appeals, grant programs and operating costs. These contributions from the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund complemented the general donations received from the community.

The Hands Across Canberra Perpetual Fund “Corpus” has continued to grow to $2.16m now under investment.

Total funds distributed to charities were as follows:

* Contributions to Perpetual Fund “Corpus” building up so as to provide a dependable funding pool to local charities in the future.

The activities of the Hands Across Canberra Group go beyond fund raising. As described elsewhere in this Impact Report, our activities are strategically divided between the 3 operational pillars of:

• raising awareness
• developing partnerships
• giving and fundraising.

In undertaking our activities, we are conscious of the need to ensure that we maximise the amount that goes to charities. In that regard we seek to maintain our operational and fundraising expenses under control. As a percentage of total expenses, our current operating expenses profile across the 3 operational pillars is as follows:

• Raising awareness                                       $220,031
• Developing partnerships                            $308,043
• Giving and fundraising                               $352,049

Our Giving and Fundraising expenses represented 17% of the amount of funding raised in 2023–24 including the building up of the Corpus for future funding of charities.

SUMMARY of RESULTS