Commonwealth Grant Guidelines updated

The revised guidelines require that agency staff must not seek information from grant applicants and recipients that has already been collected elsewhere in government. In particular, agency staff must not request information provided to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) by registered charities.

In addition, grant templates for low risk grants have been developed to ease administrative and legal costs for organisations, and the guidelines also encourage the use of longer-term grant agreements.

The guidelines support the ACNC’s 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,” says Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury.

The revised guidelines will take effect from 1 June 2013. however, agency staff may adopt some or all of the requirements in the updated guidelines as soon as possible.