Charities take fundraising into their own hands

A group of Australia’s top charities have joined forces to create an independent, not-for-profit fundraising organisation to provide a sustainable flow of funds to the four organisations.     

In a world first initiative, CanTeen, Starlight Children’s Foundation, National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) and UNICEF Australia have launched Rippling, which they said would deliver transparent and cost-effective fundraising.

Starlight CEO Louise Baxter told Pro Bono News that having an external fundraising organisation that also operated as a charity, was “the best of both worlds”.  

“Normally in an organisation, you have your in-house fundraising team, but it’s often difficult  to achieve scale because that team is only doing their fundraising for the one organisation,” Baxter said.

“There are also external for-profit fundraising partners who supply their services to multiple charities. But Rippling is a charity with the expertise of an external organisation to help us get to scale.”

With a decrease in the rate of donations being an issue many Australian charities struggle with, Baxter said that having a fundraising organisation that reflected the values of the four organisations would make them stand out.     

“I think it speaks a lot to the issues people have in this sector and this organisation will be reflective of the values that all four organisations carry with them,” she said.  

“For example, as we grow, we will aim to employ people who are representative of the people we all support in the organisation.”

A member of each charity will sit on the board of Rippling alongside independent directors.  

Baxter said that having the power of four organisations behind them meant they could bring together best practice to trial new methods and ways of fundraising.  

“There might be opportunities for us to trial fundraising together at some point in the future,” she said.

“We might actually be able to be more effective and efficient if we’re offering up multiple charities at one time during a campaign.”

She said that the four charities had given themselves three years to prove the model was effective before opening it up to other organisations.

“I think it will take that time to prove the model and to scale [our fundraising] to a level that we are happy with, and then we can work on other charities’ campaigns in the future possibly,” she said.

“We see that there is a need for growth in the sector, and so we hope that we can really operate in that space and help with some growth and do it in a way that is as ethical and efficient as possible.”