The 1% Campaign for Charity

Corporate leader Peter Hall from ethical funds management firm Hunter Hall International has begun a campaign to encourage corporate Australia to give 1% of its pre-tax profits to charities and good causes.

Hunter Hall’s Executive Chairman and founder, Peter Hall AM pursued his campaign at a company charity event to distribute cheques valued at over $575,000, the Company’s 2012 charitable allocation.

Hall said its shareholders had donated 5% of pre-tax profits totalling over $8.8m to charities or charitable purposes that support social, environmental or humanitarian causes since listing in February 2001 through the Hunter Hall Shareholder Nominated Charitable Donations Scheme.

“We know the time to act is now. Our descendents will not thank us for our passivity. Our environment is withering, bio-diversity is diminishing and preventable human suffering is flourishing. Now is the time when each of us must do what is in our power," Hall said. 

“Our Shareholders understand this and have made their stand by donating more than $8.8m to charitable causes directed at the preservation of this planet and its inhabitants.

“A great target would be if corporate Australia tried to give 1% of its pre-tax profits to charities and good causes.

“It would probably raise more than $1b, it would engage shareholders in giving which they may not be accustomed to doing and it would also empower those organisations, it might unleash tremendous powers of optimism and energy and self belief within those corporations which would be a wonderful way of trying to tackle some of the problems in our world.”

Each year Hunter Hall’s charity scheme distributes donations through a shareholder nomination process, shareholders with in excess of 50,000 (HHL) shares may nominate their own preferred Australian registered charity. Shareholders with less than 50,000 shares nominate a recipient for their portion of the donations from a selected charities list.

New charities added to the list of eligible recipients this year included SANE Australia, The Buttery and Milkcrate Theatre.

Hunter Hall says it is one of Australia’s largest dedicated ethical fund managers with $1.2b of funds under management.