ABC News reported yesterday that RSL Victoria has joined its counterparts in NSW, Queensland, South Australia and RSL National (see earlier posts in this series), with the ACNC finding that it failed to meet a number of key governance standards.

The standards concerned in this instance were:

• ensuring a charity has operated on a not-for-profit basis
• that officeholders practice care and diligence, and
• that officeholders manage a charity’s financial affairs in a responsible manner.

RSL Victoria has entered into a compliance agreement with the ACNC which requires the Branch to take action in five areas:

• Create new policy for financial management
• Review the honorarium system
• Review decision-making frameworks
• The state executive must undertake governance training
• Provide full disclosure of the compliance agreement to the state conference.

At the time of writing, neither the ACNC nor RSL Victoria had published any further information on the investigation and its findings.

As with other State Branches, RSL Victoria does important work for current and past members of the services, and also provides community support for:

• Local sporting groups and clubs
• Educational institutions with grants and scholarships
• Emergency services (equipment and funding)
• Health and aged care
• Kindred organisations such as Legacy
• Other mainstream charities doing great work across Victoria.

It is a large and complex enterprise, with long-standing traditions and systems, some of which may have led to governance blind-spots, which are now being addressed.

NFP Governance Review / Governance Training / Board Briefing

For assistance in reviewing your governance arrangements, or to arrange either governance training or a Board Briefing on governance issues (such as those raised in this series of articles on ‘Learning from others’ mistakes‘), please contact me on 0419 347 599 or by email (at garry.pearson@polgovpro.com.au).  Ask about PolGovPro’s fixed price offers for one-hour, half day or full day programs.