Archived: P4T Inc, Charity Review

This is a charity review, a review for those with an interest in the Australian charity P4T Inc (P4T) [i].

It is structured according to the charity’s entry on the ACNC[ii]Register, and its purpose is to supply some information extra to what is there, information that may be helpful in your decision about P4T.

It is up to you to decide whether any or all of the information presented here is what you need in order to make that decision, and whether you should seek any other information, either from the charity itself or from other sources.

Ministry response

Prior to publishing this review, I sent my observations to the charity, on 8 February 2016, and invited them to comment. After requesting and receiving extra time to respond, they then chose not to offer any comment.

Organisation of this review

• The first part of this review is organised according to the headings in the Register entry. This is how to use this section of the review:
  1. For each heading in the register entry, first read the information under that heading.
  2. Then check if that heading is included below. (Headings for which there is no comment are not included.)
• There is then a more detailed comment on the Financial Report.

Sources

• ACNC Register (including links)
• Google search on the charity’s name.
• P4T on FaceBook (last entry 28.11.14), and Twitter. Not on Vimeo or YouTube. On LinkedIn as a group.
• State government fundraising licence registers.
• www.glassdoor.com.au

REGISTRATION DETAILS

Entity Subtype

• Not a subtype suggestive of an organisation that is sharing the Gospel.
• The constitution does not mention the Bible, let alone the Gospel.

CHARITY DETAILS

Legal Name

• P4T is a Victorian incorporated association.

Other Name(s)

• P4T’s trading name is missing here, but this is of no consequence because (1) it is a trading name, not a business name, and (2) it is identical to the legal name.
• P4T trades as much, if not more, as ‘Partnering for Transformation’, e.g. here, here. Not legally?  (It has not registered that as a business name.)

Charity ABN

• Tax deductibility: You cannot claim a tax deduction for a donation to P4T.

Charity Street Address

• A different address (44 Rutland Rd, BOX HILL, VIC 3128) is on at least two of the state fundraising registers.
• The website was not available to check for a postal address.

Website

• Not available at the time of writing.

ANNUAL REPORTING

• AIS 2014
  • This is P4T’s compulsory Annual Information Statement 2014 (AIS 2014).
  • It gives basic financial information. If you think that this might be sufficient for you
    • ‘Employee expenses/payments’ are called ‘Consultant’s Fees’ in the profit or loss statement. The AIS discloses the existence of employees.
    • The two ‘Grants and donations…’ items equate to ‘Pingpongathon Expenses’ in the profit or loss statement, but that includes $1,765 ‘Credit card fee’.
• Financial Report 2014
  • P4T is not required to submit a financial report to the ACNC. This submission was therefore voluntary.
    • The report is missing an audit report. Because P4T, as a member of Missions Interlink, is required to ‘have available for its members and supporters a clear and appropriate financial statement which has been approved by its auditor,[iii] I asked them to send me the audit report.
  • The Financial Report was signed just over two months after the year end.
  • It was then lodged less than a month after that.
  • The coverage of finances in this review is left until the financial report proper (see Latest financial report – detail, below).

ABOUT THE CHARITY

• Statement of Faith
  • The website was not available to check for a statement.
  • There is no statement of faith in the constitution.

Who the Charity Benefits

• Vision
  • The website was not available to check for the vision.
• Mission
  • The website was not available to check for the mission.
  • There is a statement of purpose, as rule 2 of the constitution:
    • P4T exists to foster sustainable human and social flourishing through the use of thought leadership, media engagement, relational thinking, community development and education & training activities.
• Activities (What did P4T do?)
  • From the Description of charity’s activities and outcomes in the AIS 2014:
    • P4T undertook a range of training activities in the Community Development space. It also ran a fundraising project called the Pingpongathon to raise awareness about Human (sic) trafficking.
• Outcomes (What did P4T deliver?)
  • P4T did not respond to the request in the AIS 2014 for a description of its outcomes.
  • The website was not available to check for outcomes.
• Impact (How were people’s lives improved?
  • The website was not available to check for impacts.

Size of Charity)

• With a revenue of $179K, P4T is $71K short of moving up the next size (Medium).

Financial Year End

• This means that the next financial report is due by 30 June 2016. Before that the financial information on the Register will be up to 18 months out-of-date.
  • You may therefore need to request more up-to-date information.

WHERE THE CHARITY OPERATES

Operating State(s)[iv]

• As an association P4T is a registrable Australian body. If it has understood this section, it is saying that they are conducting business outside Victoria – in fact everywhere except the ACT and Queensland. This means that P4T needs to register under Part 5B.2 of the Corporations Act 2001. Its lack of an ARBN shows that it’s not registered.
• Assuming that it raises less than $15K p.a. in the ACT, and less than $10K p.a. in Victoria, and therefore has an exemption in those states, P4T has a fundraising licence in all the states that have a licensing regime[v].

CHARITY’S DOCUMENT (SIC)

• There is no Annual Report/Review available on the ACNC Register.
• The website was not available to check.

RESPONSIBLE PERSONS

No. of Australian ‘responsible person’ positions[vi]

Raymond Chow           This function was not available at the time of publishing

Bob Simpson

Ian Skurrie

Stephen Lowe

Mark Breyley

• To match what is required by its constitution, the ‘Positions’ should be President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer.
• To check whether the size of the committee is compliant with the constitution, one would need to know how many ordinary members were elected under rule 53.
• The website was not available to check the composition of the committee there.  

(End of review of the ACNC Register information)

Latest financial report – detail

• The Notes to the Financial Statements (Note 1) say that the directors have assessed that ‘there are no users dependent on general purpose financial reports’. This means that they are saying that anybody needing financial information about P4T can ring them up and request a financial report tailored to their particular needs. If this is the case, then perhaps they should say this alongside any request for donors and volunteers?
• This decision allows them to produce statements that do not, by definition, comply with all the Australian Accounting Standards, statements produced according to some special purpose framework.
• However, the directors do not describe the framework they have chosen. Yes, they describe some accounting policies, but on what basis did they include policies rather than omit them, choose these policies rather than others?
• The accounts were prepared by a member of the accounting profession, and then they were audited by a member of the profession. They should therefore comply with both the Australian Accounting Standards and the Australian Auditing Standards. They don’t.
  • The report is missing two of the required financial statements.
  • The audit report does not comply with the Auditing Standard applicable to special purpose statements. (For one thing part of its language was superseded in 2006.)

(End of review)

[i] And, because it is a member of Missions Interlink, those interested in the accountability provided by that organisation.

[ii] Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, Australia’s national regulator of charities.

[iii] Standards 4.1.

[iv] This is how the ACNC explains ‘operating locations’ in their application guide: ‘You need to give details about where in Australia your organisation conducts (or plans to conduct) its activities.’

[v] Care: it is registered as PT4inc on the SA register of fundraisers.

[vi] Because of the possibility of two (or more) directors having the same name on the register of responsible persons, it is not possible to be definitive about the number of directorships held.