According to the Australian Charities and Non-Profits Commission (ACNC), in 2021, Australian donors made over 12 billion dollars in donations & bequests to Australian charities. The ACNC has been collecting data on Australian charities for the past ten years (since 2014) and operates on a two-year delay when reporting data. Each year the data is becoming more comprehensive and insightful. We can see that since 2014 the value of donations & bequests has increased significantly:
When the ACNC measure the value of Australian charity's income each year they split the income across the following categories:
Revenue from the government
Donations and bequests
Revenue from goods and services
Revenue from investments
All other revenue
It is important to note that donations and bequests represent only one category of income for charities, with some charities generating significantly more income from categories such as revenue from investments. Each charity is different and approaches its income generation in a way that best suits its business. It is nice to know that Australians are becoming more generous with each passing year, with the average Australian adult donating around $740 per year on average. Interestingly, that equates to nearly 348 million dollars in credit card fees for groups such as Mastercard and Visa each year from donations and bequests alone. It will be interesting in the coming years to see how the ACNC decides to classify and record donations of cryptocurrency. They have already taken steps toward starting to clearly define the various mechanisms involved in the process: