GOODCOMPANY RESEARCH · PILOT EDITION · JULY 2026
The Charity Divide
Australia has two charity economies — one holds the money, the other holds the people.
Explore where revenue, government funding, donations, assets, paid capacity and volunteer participation actually sit across 53,722 registered Australian charities.
Based on the ACNC 2024 Annual Information Statement public extract. Financial Ginis exclude Basic Religious Charity records with no reported financial data. Volunteer results include a sensitivity scenario.
THE CAPITAL ECONOMY
85.3%
of all reported revenue is received by the top 5% of financial reporters. The top 1% alone take 62.7%.
THE PARTICIPATION ECONOMY
81–84%
of reported volunteers sit in the bottom 95% of charities ranked by revenue — the ones with almost none of the money.
THE FINDINGS
Six results worth sharing
The original 90/90 hypothesis does not hold. The more interesting pattern emerges at the bottom 95%, and in the gap between financial resources and community participation.
01
Revenue is extremely concentrated
Gini 0.945. The top 1% of financial reporters receive 62.7% of all revenue.
02
Government funding is the most concentrated of all
Gini 0.972. The top 1% receive 71.0% of government revenue.
03
The bottom 90% do not deliver 90%
They account for about 40–47% of reported volunteers — a long way from the hypothesis.
04
The bottom 95% is the revealing threshold
14.7% of revenue, but 81–84% of reported volunteers.
05
Volunteer-run charities are under-resourced
44.5% of all records, receiving 0.3% of government funding.
06
The conclusion survives stress tests
Revenue Gini remains 0.937 after removing the ten largest records entirely.
INTERACTIVE LORENZ EXPLORER
How concentrated is each resource?
A Lorenz curve plots the cumulative share of a resource against the cumulative share of organisations. The further the curve bows away from the dashed line of equality, the greater the concentration.
MOVE THE THRESHOLD
Where does the bottom X% sit?
A different question from a Gini: order financial reporters from smallest to largest by revenue, then ask how much of each resource sits below the line you choose.
SIZE BANDS
Two economies, band by band
Switch the resource to see how organisations, money and volunteers are distributed across ACNC revenue bands.
VOLUNTEER-RUN CHARITIES
Nearly half the sector, almost none of the funding
Charities reporting no paid staff — 23,915 records — measured against every resource in the dataset.
What this suggests
Volunteer-run charities are far more visible in the donation distribution than in government funding. That does not prove unmet need, but it raises a clear access question: are grant pathways and reporting requirements proportionate to the scale and capacity of community organisations?
“The money sits at the top. Community participation happens much more widely.”
The objective is not to divert support away from large charities. It is to widen the field of organisations that people and companies can confidently find, support and volunteer with.
REPORTS AND MEDIA
Download the research
All publication files are free to read, share and republish with attribution.
METHOD AND CAUTION
Read the dashboard precisely
Independent GoodCompany analysis of the ACNC public extract. It is a map of distribution, not a ranking of merit.
Financial scope
Primary financial Ginis use 45,917 records, after excluding 7,805 Basic Religious Charity records with no reported revenue, assets or expenses.
Volunteer uncertainty
The public extract reports 608,743 volunteers for QCWA. Because that record is unresolved, volunteer results are shown as a raw-to-sensitivity range.
What a Gini cannot tell us
It does not determine effectiveness, need, impact, or whether any particular grant is fair. Concentration is not, by itself, a verdict.
Data quality matters
The Lightning Ridge Local Aboriginal Land Council AIS record displayed $54.674 billion in revenue, while its audited accounts report $546,724. The confirmed correction is applied in this analysis. Financial concentration remains extreme under aggressive outlier tests.
Primary sources: ACNC Australian Charities Report, 12th Edition; ACNC 2024 AIS public dataset; ACNC Explanatory Notes — 2024 AIS; ABS Income and Wealth Inequality; ACNC Charity by numbers: The volunteer effect. This is independent GoodCompany analysis, not an ACNC publication.
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