Where Does Australia's
$222 Billion Go?

Australia's charity sector is enormous. In 2023, the 53,207 charities registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) reported a combined revenue of $222 billion — more than the GDP of New Zealand. They held $494 billion in assets, employed millions of staff, and engaged 3.9 million volunteers.

But where does all that money go? The ACNC requires every registered charity to submit an Annual Information Statement (AIS) each year. These filings are published as open data on data.gov.au. We imported all 359,678 records spanning 2017–2023 to find out.

The answer is not straightforward. Of that $222 billion, only $11.3 billion was reported as grants and donations — money flowing out to other organisations or individuals. The majority goes to employee costs ($118 billion), service delivery, and asset growth.

The most striking finding in the data is how concentrated giving is. Of the 30,166 charities that reported distributing donations in 2023, the top 10% captured 90.3% of all donation dollars. The bottom 50% shared less than 0.004%.

This isn't static — it's getting worse. In 2017, the top 10% share was 86.7%. By 2023, it had climbed to 90.3%, a steady march toward greater concentration. The Gini coefficient for charitable giving in Australia sits at approximately 0.96 — higher than the most unequal economies on earth.

To visualise this: if you lined up all 30,000+ charities from smallest to largest and walked halfway down the line, you'd have covered organisations that collectively received less than $500,000. The last 3,000 charities in that line received over $10 billion.

The 30 largest asset holders in the charity sector control over $130 billion. But who are they? The answer may surprise you — only two are philanthropic foundations. The rest are universities, religious institutions, and hospitals.

The University of Melbourne tops the list at $12 billion, followed by the University of Sydney at $10.1 billion. The Wildlife Land Fund sits at $8.5 billion in assets with zero dollars in grants distributed. Minderoo Foundation appears at #4 with $7.6 billion in assets — up from $640 million in 2017 — but a giving ratio of just 3.1%.

Monash University, UNSW, ANU, and UQ all appear in the top 15. These institutions are technically charities, but their “grants” often include research passthrough funding — money that comes in from government and gets redistributed to researchers, not to the community. The line between charity and enterprise blurs considerably at this scale.

Religious organisations hold significant assets too. The Catholic Church entities, Anglican Diocese trusts, and Uniting Church bodies collectively control billions. Their “grants” often include internal transfers between entities within the same denomination.

Not all foundations are created equal. We scored Australia's eight most prominent private foundations on a simple metric: how much of their revenue actually flows out as grants? The results range from exemplary to concerning.

KMP compensation data only became available in the AIS from 2022. The results are striking: 89% of charities that reported KMP data paid their executives more than they distributed in grants.

Total executive compensation across the sector: $3.75 billion. To be fair, many charities are service-delivery organisations where executive talent is essential — hospitals, universities, and aged care providers need qualified leaders. But the ratio of pay-to-grants is still worth examining.

The most extreme cases tell a story. Little Company of Mary (Calvary Health Care) paid $17.5 million in KMP compensation against $0.5 million in grants — a 34:1 ratio. RMIT University paid $9.9 million against $4 million in grants. Meanwhile, Paul Ramsay Foundation paid $1.7 million in KMP against $184 million in grants — a 1:108 ratio in favour of giving.

Where charities get their money matters as much as how they spend it. The funding model shapes everything — priorities, autonomy, and vulnerability to cuts.

Large charities (5,628 organisations, $209 billion in revenue) get 49% of their income from government. They are, in effect, outsourced government service providers. Only 7% comes from donations.

Small charities (39,460 organisations, $3.3 billion in revenue) are the mirror image. They receive just 17% from government and depend on donations for 38% of their income. These are your local community groups, grassroots organisations, and volunteer-run services. They are closest to the communities they serve, yet furthest from stable funding.

Medium charities (8,116 organisations, $9.6 billion) sit in between — 35% government, 22% donations — and are increasingly squeezed from both sides.

While large charities posted a $13.7 billion surplus in 2023, medium charities went into deficit for the first time, posting a -$1.84 billion loss.

The asset gap tells an even starker story. Large charities grew their assets from $241 billion to $425 billion between 2017 and 2023 — a 76% increase. Small charities grew from $10 billion to $35 billion. In absolute terms, the gap widened by nearly $150 billion.

What does this mean in practice? It means that the organisations closest to communities — the ones running youth programs, food banks, cultural events, and crisis services — are operating with shrinking margins while the sector's largest players accumulate unprecedented wealth.

The Access Gap report digs deeper into this dynamic, examining how compliance costs and admin burden disproportionately affect small organisations.

Is a system that holds $494 billion in assets while distributing $11.3 billion in grants really working for the communities it claims to serve?

This is not a rhetorical question. The data says that concentration is increasing, that executive pay dwarfs grant-making in most charities, that small organisations are being squeezed, and that billions sit in endowments growing rather than being deployed.

But the data also shows genuine models of excellence. Foundations like Paul Ramsay, Ian Potter, Snow Medical, and Pratt demonstrate that it's possible to run a foundation that prioritises giving over asset growth, that keeps executive costs low, and that deploys capital for impact.

The difference between an A+ and an F on our scorecard isn't about wealth — it's about intent. And in a sector that enjoys tax-deductible status as a public benefit, intent should be visible, measurable, and accountable.

This data is public. Published by the ACNC under CC BY 4.0. Every number can be verified, queried, and challenged. Transparency isn't just about publishing data — it's about making it legible.