Today, the Government formally launched the revised Commonwealth Grant Guidelines, which will reduce red tape and improve collaboration between government and the not-for-profit sector.
"We support the important work of not-for-profit organisations and want to make it easier for them to continue to help the community," Minister Wong said.
The revised Guidelines require that agency staff must not seek information from grant applicants and recipients that is already collected elsewhere in government and available to agency staff. It also means that agencies must have regard to information already collected by regulators. In particular, agency staff must not request information provided to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) by organisations regulated by that body.
"This means less duplication and less time spent providing the same information."
Grant templates for low-risk grants have also been developed to ease administrative and legal costs for organisations.
The Guidelines also encourage the use of longer-term grant agreements.
"These Guidelines will improve our interaction with the not-for-profit sector and reduce unnecessary red tape and costs to organisations," Minister Wong said.
The new Guidelines support the ACNCs implementation of a 'report-once, use-often' reporting framework, which is based around a Charity Passport. The Charity Passport is a collection of data that charities will report once to the ACNC to meet the baseline corporate and financial reporting requirements of Australian Government agencies," Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury said. "One of the key objectives of the ACNC is to reduce the regulatory burden currently imposed upon the NFP sector, which means ensuring that Australian charities don't have to provide the same information over and over again to Government."
The Gillard Government is working to support and sustain a vibrant, independent and innovative NFP sector, Minister Butler said.
We look forward to continuing to deliver reforms that will strengthen the sector as it grows into the future.
The revised Guidelines can be found at http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/fmg-series/3-commonwealth-grant-guidelines.html.