The Assistant Treasurer, Senator Nick Sherry, has today highlighted the Private Ancillary Fund (PAF) statistics for the 2007-08 financial year, which show continued growth in donations and assets in the philanthropic sector.
PAFs are philanthropic trust funds that can be set up as a vehicle for private giving and they received an increase in full-year donations from $533 million in 2006-07 to $728 million in 2007-08. PAF assets increased from $1.48 to $1.89 billion over the same period.
There was a 28.4% increase in the number of PAFs registered during 2007-08 bringing the total number of PAFs to 769.
Donations to PAFs are tax-deductible and must be distributed to deductible gift recipients, such as public benevolent institutions, public hospitals and environmental organisations.
"It's great to see the philanthropic sector continuing to grow, and grow very strongly," said the Assistant Treasurer.
"The Rudd Government is firmly committed to supporting private charitable initiatives and we've backed that up with wholesale reforms to how these funds are regulated."
"Our reforms boost transparency and improve the confidence of philanthropic givers and charitable and other receivers of funds."
Legislation giving effect to the reforms took effect from 1 October 2009.
The latest data also shows the distribution of funds from PAFs by recipient sector.
The largest recipient of fund distributions in 2007-08 was the welfare sector, comprising 31.5 per cent of total distributions, with educational, environmental and cultural organisations also receiving a substantial proportion of donations.
"Support for the welfare sector is the core business of philanthropic funds and it makes a real difference to the lives of many disadvantaged members of our community," the Assistant Treasurer said.
"The Rudd Government encourages the donations of generous Australians to a variety of causes – but at the same time we understand the importance of accountability."
"Publicly available statistics improve both the transparency of these funds and boost confidence in the charitable sector more generally."
The full statistics are available on the ATO website at www.ato.gov.au